


Time Spanned Souls

by Lancre_witch



Category: Legacy of Kain, MediEvil (Video Games)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Crossover, Gen, Yes I'm writing the sequel I said I wouldn't write
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-09
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2019-05-20 05:44:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 29,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14888735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lancre_witch/pseuds/Lancre_witch
Summary: It’s a brave new world, but with the same old problems, and now Dan and Raziel are in the thick of it, contending with the evil Lord Palethorn, his army of darkness, and an awful lot of culture shock.(Sequel to Lost Soul, loosely following the plot of Medievil 2. No real knowledge of the previous fic is required.)





	1. Knight at the Museum

The book fell open on the lectern. Demonic sigils and arcane signs were exposed to the light of day for the first time in eight centuries. Its owner laughed, a low menacing chuckle, but this was not the necromancer Zarok. This was a new age and a new evil.

A hand grasped a jewelled staff, draining power from its pages. Blue light crackled uncertainly down its length, dancing between realms for its new master, gathering more power than any human was meant to hold.

The shock of the spell was felt by every living and dead thing for miles around; the force of the spectral energy broke windows, made horses bolt, and caused the ancient tome to crumble. Pages scattered in the breeze heedless to the cursing man below. He only noticed as the paper slipped between his fingers that they were now a demonic red, twisted into a mirror of his soul by the blast.

In his study Professor Kift looked up at the darkening sky. “So it’s today, then, is it? Winston!” he called. “Winston, you know what to do.” He added, more quietly, “I just wish that I did.”

*

Raziel opened his eyes and swore. Wherever he was, it could not be mistaken for the Hall of Heroes. Artefacts lined the walls and glass cabinets covered the floor, but his eye was drawn to the flamberge sword lying on the pedestal he had so recently occupied. Reading the plaque beside it merely confirmed what he already knew. “This sword, known historically as the Soul Reaver, was found in the ruins of Avernus by Miss Lara Croft in the excavations of 1877. The origins of this enigmatic blade are lost to time, but it was said to be wielded by the legendary warrior Kain...” Raziel read on, becoming more and more incredulous as to the foolish peasant beliefs surrounding the blade. Kain was dead, then. There could be no other reason for him being parted from it. Once, the thought would have brought him pleasure, but now an emptiness welled up inside of him.

Wanting to leave this place of faded memories, he tried the door only to find it locked. At the other egress a pile of rubble blocked his way. “Prisoner once more,” he mused and settled down to wait. Raziel had known enough of eternity to learn patience.

*

Dan’s first thought as he woke to the sound of tinkling glass was to wonder what Raziel and Woden were fighting about now. His second thought was, “Why is the bed so hard?” After glancing around, his third thought was, “Where the hell am I?”

As if on cue, the spirit of a young boy appeared, grinning as if he had known him all his life. “Sir Daniel Fortesque, back from the dead once again. The great hero of Gallowmere reduced to a dusty relic at the back of the old museum.”

“What? How? Museum?” he began, if anything more at sea than he was before.

“Things have changed since you’ve been away. My boss’ll explain everything when you get out of here, but right now you need to find yourself a weapon and get ready for a scrap. It’s a brave new world, but we’ve still got the same old problems.” With that, he vanished, leaving Dan’s head still full of questions.

Deciding the best way to answer them was to take a look around, he yawned, stretched, and wandered into the adjoining room. What he saw there would have made his heart sink if he had one. The crumbled statues were unmistakably the likenesses from the Hall of Heroes. Ravenhooves, Imanzi, Karl… “Raziel, he whispered, “I really wish you were here.” Taking a short sword from Woden’s stone grip, he made his way along the corridor, trying to ignore the tightness in his chest.

The presence of the undead in a museum baffled him – did these people make a habit of putting corpses on display? – but a few centuries of swordplay with Dirk had trained him well. He cut down the revenants with ease, or at least with less difficulty than he had expected. He turned to leave before noticing a key in one of the fallen zombies’ hands. Swallowing his revulsion, Dan pried it loose and slid it into a pocket.

Emboldened, he strode into the next room and screamed when two suits of armour shattered their cases and started towards him. He could have stood and fought, but given he was outnumbered, outclassed and out equipped, he considered discretion to be the better part of valour, and fled.

The exhibit Dan found himself in proclaimed itself to be the history of firearms. He recognised the unstrung crossbows hanging from the wall, but the things below it better resembled the armaments of Zarok’s boiler guards. He picked one up for a closer look.

Their operation looked simple enough, and the small one wouldn’t weigh him down. After a certain amount of confusion, he figured out that if you dropped the metal slug into the barrel, pulled back the thingy, then pulled back the other thingy, then the slug would be fired out at high speed, completely destroying the displays on the opposite wall, and presumably anything else in its way. Dan pocketed the pistol, picked up the remaining rounds and left before he could do any more damage.

In his haste to leave, he didn’t notice the ladder he was climbing down led to a dead end until he was already at the bottom, but that was less of a concern than the steady thumping sound like monstrous footsteps heading towards him. The wall above Dan’s head crumbled, proving the analogy to be well founded. A great beast like a skeletal dragon focused its eyeless gaze on him and roared. Shaking, he backed away, raising a sword which looked like a toothpick in comparison to the monster. It leaned further into the room, turned towards his weaving blade, and retreated with footsteps heavy enough to make a statue topple.

 “I scared it off,” Dan said in disbelief. “And don’t come back!” he shouted after it.

Almost as soon as the words were said, something jumped down through the hole in the wall. Three things, in fact. They were about the size of a large dog, skeletal and somewhat birdlike, but this was no time for a more detailed analysis. They leapt at him, biting and tearing, beams of something between magic and flames leaping from their mouths. Vicious they may have been, but their bones were older than aeons and they crumbled with a few sword blows.

Not wanting to try climbing through the hole in the wall and risk encountering the beast again, Dan scrambled up the statue to a balcony, and there to a plush staircase and hallway. If Raziel had been with him, he would have considered the cannon primed and placed so conveniently before a doorway blocked with fallen masonry to be suspicious, but all Dan thought was that he needed to find a cannon ball.

A search of the gardens yielded nothing but half a dozen zombies, but the opposite display room had one on show, along with a couple of suits of armour which sprung into life at his approach. Weighed down by 32 pounds of lead, he barely made it out the room with enough time to slam the door on them. Hurriedly, he loaded the cannon, lit the mortar and stood well back.

When the dust had cleared and sound returned, the first thing he saw was a figure striding towards him holding an intimidatingly large sword. Muscle memory raised his own blade, and a second glance made him lower it.

“Raziel?”              

“Daniel!”  His elation quickly turned to questioning. “Is this Zarok’s work?”

Dan shrugged. “I wish I knew. Apparently we’re in a museum in Kensington, wherever that is.”

“And whenever this is. If this place uses the same counting system as Gallowmere, five centuries have passed.”

“At least this time we’re promised allies.” Dan gave him a brief account of what had happened since his waking.

“We shall struggle to find answers if you intend to continue this way. The door is locked and I gave up on trying to break it down some time ago.”

“You don’t suppose this is worth a try?” He held up the grisly key and tried to fit it in the lock while touching it as little as possible.

“Give that here.” Raziel nudged him out of the way, wrestled with the key, shouldered the door into submission, and led the way to the entrance hall.


	2. Tyrannosaurus Wrecks

Lights danced in the air and ran together to reveal Winston, translucent and grinning, before either man had a chance to draw his weapon. Dan’s hand slipped sheepishly from his pommel as the ghost greeted him.

“Good to see you, Dan, and I see you’ve found a friend. I would say the more the merrier, but we’ve got far too much company for my liking. You’ll need to stop that dinosaur before it gets out onto the streets of London.”

“Dinosaur? I thought it was a dragon.” Dan looked even less happy about facing an unknown quantity, and Winston must have picked up on the quaver in his voice.

“Don’t be too scared, Dan, look for his weak point. Afterwards I’ll take you to meet my boss.”

“Who do you work for, Winston?” Raziel asked, ready to grab Dan and run at the first mention of gods, priests or prophecies.

“Professor Kift’s the cove’s name. Scientist, magician, historian, he’ll set you on the right track. Good luck!” Before either of them could say anything else, he vanished.

“Well that was enlightening,” Raiel commented dryly. “Shall we?”

“If we really have to.” Daniel followed Raziel inside.

 

The large circular room was empty except for some bones scattered on the floor.

“The remains of a meal?” Raziel began before he was cut off by the bones swooping around him and coalescing in the centre of the floor.

Dan stared at the growing behemoth and reached for Raziel’s hand. When he saw the wraith draw his sword to charge the thing, he dragged him into a nearby stairwell, just ahead of a gout of flame issuing from the beast’s mouth.

“Daniel, what are you doing?” Raziel shrugged off his hand. “We need to kill that thing.”

“If we fight it down there we’re going to die. Again. We need a strategy.”

He conceded his point. “What do you have in mind?”

“Up here.”

He was towed up the stairs onto a circular walkway which ran around the circumference of the room below, then thrown out of the way of a block of falling masonry as the dinosaur head-butted the wall beneath them.

Daniel had been right. The creature was confused now it has two targets to choose between. It swung between one and the other, but couldn’t quite make up its mind to charge. After some to-ing and fro-ing, its cranium glowed red and it roared.

“Weak spot?” Raziel asked.

“Weak spot.”

The wraith leapt onto its head with easy agility, leaving Dan to fight the smaller skeletons it had summoned. He swung the Reaver and heard the satisfying sound of breaking bone when it struck home. The monster screamed and threw him off, but it was already falling back to nothing more than a pile of bones. He was about to walk away in the knowledge of a job well done, but was stopped by a rattling sound. The bones were joining together again, but into a very different form.

“Daniel, look out!”

Dan looked up in time to see what was surely a skeletal dragon swooping towards him. He flung himself out of the way as a beak like a scimitar scythed through the air half a pace behind him.

“How in the hell are we going to reach that?” Raziel shouted over the sound of its wingbeats.

“Can you distract it for a minute?”

Raziel somersaulted out of the way of a ball of flame. “I do not think that this will be an issue.”

He didn’t pay much attention to whatever Dan was cursing and fiddling about with – no doubt some sort of crossbow. Dodging the dinosaur’s dives and flames was a much pressing diversion. The assault stopped momentarily and Raziel looked up at the now glowing creature, then covered his ears against a godawful racket like a series of cracks of thunder. Whatever Daniel was doing, it was having even more of an effect on their adversary than it was having on him. The beast crashed to the ground in flames and crumbled to dust.

“What was _that_?”

“A small explosion?”

“No, I meant that thing you used to kill it.”

“Oh, a sort of hand cannon I picked up. I think it’s called a gonne?” That didn’t quite sound right, but he was shaking with adrenaline and didn’t currently care overmuch about the thing’s name.

*

They were met by Winston just outside the museum. “You made it!” he said with what sounded to Dan like just a touch of surprise. “The Professor’s set up an underground base. Just through here.” They followed the ghost down a subterranean train track, walking close together by unspoken agreement. Neither needed any reminder of the last time they took such a path through one of Gallowmere’s mountains.

The tunnel opened out into a dimly lit room with work benches, arcane mechanisms, and what they would later learn was a projector screen. A small, skinny man looked up from his tinkering as Winston approached him. “Ah, well done. You found him.” He turned from the spirit to his more corporeal guests. “Fortesque, pleased to meet you, and, er…”

“Raziel,” Dan supplied.

“It’s a pleasure, I’m sure. Now, I imagine that you’re both a little nonplussed as to what exactly is going on, eh?” Dan nodded. Raziel watched him with predatory eyes. He was nervous, which was to be expected, but there seemed to be something else, something deeper. Slightly unnerved, the professor continued. “Well, allow me to introduce myself. Professor Hamilton Kift, magician, inventor, and master of the occult at your service.”

Dan inclined his head. “Does this mean Zarok’s back again?”

“Not the man himself, thank goodness, but someone has got their hands on his spellbook.” He continued over the two men’s chorus of groans, “Well, people like myself have been searching for that book for centuries. The power within its pages…”

Raziel immediately categorised this as grounds for mistrust. He doubted anyone could want those spells for benign reasons. He surfaced from his thoughts to hear Kift talking about getting suitable power to get the lab running. “Do you mean soul energy?”

“Got it in one, dear chap. I can see we’re going to appreciate having you on the team. Just carry this with you and any souls you free can go into powering my machines.” He handed Dan the chalice of souls and continued as if he wasn’t casually doing something in a basement that Raziel’s ancestors had built temples to achieve. “We’re quite close to the epicentre of the blast here. Look in the streets around the museum for any clue for who’s behind this, collecting all the soul energy you can along the way. Winston, you look around for anything out of the ordinary. I will try to get this place in some sort of order. Off you go!”


	3. Kensington

The shadows of the spell still hung in the sky, bathing the streets in a sickly red hue. In the normal run of things, this would have been a pleasant part of the city, but in the normal run of things dead bodies weren’t lying on the cobbles. Raziel kicked one and seemed almost disappointed that it remained inert.

Dan nudged him. “Someone’s coming. Come on, we don’t want to scare them.” He pulled Raziel into whatever cover an ornamental fountain could provide, and watched the man stop in the middle of the corpses.

“This isn’t good,” Dan said, winning the Raziel Understatement of the Year competition.

Green lightning spouted from the man’s upraised cane and the corpses started moving.

“That’s even worse. New plan – get him!”

Raziel swung the Reaver at their slightly transparent adversary and almost lost his balance as it passed straight through him without doing a hint of damage to his soul. “Damned blood sucking blade,” he muttered and turned his attention to the zombies.

Dan was already hacking at them with abandon, and with Raziel joining in the battle was over in under a minute.

“No souls,” he commented. “How strange.”

His attention was caught once again by the top hatted man. Now his minions were felled, he was becoming more corporeal, flickering between states. Before either had a chance to land a blow on him, another burst of light issued from his cane and the bodies started twitching as dark unlife returned to them. It was cut short by Dan’s sword scything cleanly through the zombie master’s chest. Raziel caught the cane as it fell and smashed it on the cobbles, letting free the spirits it had trapped, and imbuing the chalice with their energy.

“We’ve still got it,” Dan grinned. “Now what exactly are we looking for? Spikey architecture, a really esoteric book collection, a big sign saying ‘Evil lair this way’?”

“I assume we shall know when we see it. Speaking of which, that window is open. Give me a boost.”

Some breaking and entering, and one hysterically sobbing chambermaid later, they found the house they were looking for. The books with titles like _The Necromnicon – Discussed and Explained_ and _Dark Arts for Dummies_ were a definite clue. Dan peered at plans for what looked like a mechanical creature while Raziel explored upstairs, sword drawn.

“Dan! Come up here, would you?”

Stuffing the sheets of paper into his breastplate, he followed.

Raziel was standing by a lectern, his hand hovering over a golden trinket of some sorts, eyeing a stone gargoyle warily. “Draw your sword,” he said without taking his eyes off it. “I don’t trust our friend to remain immobile after I pick this up.”

Dan complied, shuffling closer. Raziel snatched the artefact up and drew the Reaver in one fluid motion, ready to strike.

“…Oh.” Raziel prodded it a few times, and nothing resolutely continued to happen.

“Come on, Raz. If we’ve got what the professor wanted, let’s get back.”

The wraith followed him back down stairs, glancing back every so often just in case the stone demon decided to spring to life after all.

They were met on the street by a worried looking Winston. “Dan! Raz! Am I glad to see you! Something’s going on at the museum and I don’t like the look of it at all. Head on over there and see what you can do.”

“Is there anything else you can tell us?” Raziel asked as they broke into a run.

“A couple of coves trying to break into the Egyptian tomb. They certainly didn’t look like maintenance staff – Dan, the door’s locked.”

Dan stopped trying to pull the doors open and gulped when he saw the striated wall Raziel was helpfully – and in his view sarcastically – pointing at. At this point he had two options; climb up the sheer side of a building or look like a coward in front of a small boy. He started climbing.

Raziel pushed Dan the last couple of foot onto the roof and scrambled up after him. He hopped to his feet, walked towards a skylight, and leapt backwards as it flew open and two humanoid forms climbed onto the roof. Skeleton, wraith and ghost watched from behind a pillar as the odd couple emerged.

The larger of the two carried a bag on his back. “Master will be please with booty!” he barked. There was no other word for the way he spoke. If you could mix a human with a dog, he would have been his result, and looked more dog than human.

His companion, who could best be described as a bipedal newt in a waistcoat seemed distracted. “Let us hope it is enough to placate him. His Lordship will not be happy that we cannot enter the tomb. You know we were meant to get-” Whatever he said next was lost under the roar of rocket engines. An airship unlike anything the time spanned duo had seen before dropped onto the roof just long enough for the strange pair to leap into, then departed as swiftly as it had arrived.

“Interesting. If we can access the tomb and recover whatever lies within, we may gain an advantage over our adversaries. Winston, tell the professor where we are, would you? Time to go tomb raiding, Daniel. Dan?”

He was peering through the skylight into the darkness in the room below. “There’s a hanging basket here. If I could drop onto it, we should be able to get down safely.” He swung himself into empty space, lost his grip, and disappeared from view. Raziel and Winston both winced at the thud several seconds later.

“Daniel? Are you hurt?”

There was no reply, but a series of four smaller thuds and distant growls made up his mind. He leapt down after him.

Raziel landed lightly in the dimly lit room and met with a scene of total chaos. Dan was wrestling with a mummified jackal, another two were circling him, and one leapt at Raziel as he looked on, momentarily stunned. He slashed at it a couple of times to give himself some space and threw a telekinetic blast at the one on top of Dan.

With the weight removed, Dan rolled upright and drew his sword. He swung wildly, struggling to see his targets in the half light, but still struck a glancing blow. The mummification process had made the predators even more durable and even with the Reaver it was a struggle to deal them any real damage. A wild swing cut one in half, another needed to be thoroughly dismembered before it stopped fighting, and another shrugged off being impaled. While Raziel was trying to shake it off his sword, the last remaining jackal leapt at him from behind and he screamed as it tore up the remnants of his wings.

“Stay down!” Dan pulled out his pistol and fired off shot after shot until it stopped moving.

Raziel accepted his hand and pulled himself up shakily, throwing him a grateful look, and quickly consumed the creature’s soul before it could be drawn into the chalice. Once he did so, the heavy doors of the tomb ground open.

“A test or a trap?” Raziel asked.

“Does it matter? We’re going in anyway.” Having resigned himself to his life at this point, Dan picked up an unaccountably lit torch by the entrance and led the way inside.

The maze of twisting passageways eventually led to a circular chamber with a raised dais in the centre surrounded by three statues. Each one had the head of an animal and each of them was holding something, but something wasn’t quite right.

“That one should be holding the scroll,” Raziel said. “Look at the position of his hands.”

With an effort, they swapped the heavy stone artefacts and dropped them into place. A creaking, grinding noise filled the chamber and a sarcophagus slowly rose from the floor. The door opened, revealing a young woman, half covered in bandages and blue from some strange form of preservation or decay. Her eyes opened and she screamed, backing as far away from the skeletal pair as possible.

“It’s alright, miss,” Dan mumbled, raising his hands and approaching slowly. She scrabbled back further into the wall.

“Daniel, stop. I doubt she can understand us.” Raziel squatted down, removed his sword and carefully slid it along the floor to her. He began to spread his hands out in a conciliatory gesture, remembered his claws, and stopped.

She looked at him silently for a moment, then said something in a language he couldn’t understand. He glanced at Daniel, who shrugged. He turned his attention back to the young lady who was now looking through the jewellery she had been buried in. Finally, she found a small square tablet and said another few words in the same tongue, making magic flicker in the air. Her gaze swept over both of them and she said, “I am not going back to my husband.”

“You need not worry on that account. Your husband is long dead,” Raziel said, exhibiting in one sentence all the social skills he had collected over the millennia.

Dan groaned and stepped closer, ready to comfort her. “It’s alright, miss…”

“It is wonderful. Good sirs, who do I have to thank for rescuing me?”

“Sir Daniel Fortesque, Captain of King Peregrine’s militia, and-” he gestured the wraith- “Lord Raziel of Nosgoth.”

She nodded politely. “Kiya, just Kiya. I never had much time to get used to the idea of being a princess.”

“You married a prince?” Dan hazarded.

“Not… exactly.”

The walk back was long enough to get the full story of the slave girl turned royal bride turned human sacrifice. Dan had to stop himself from saying something unsuited to ladies’ ears, and Raziel gripped his sword a little tighter and laid into any wandering zombies with a little more viciousness than was really called for. Kiya, it seemed, had found herself amongst friends.


	4. The Freakshow

Professor Kift accepted the papers and pocket watch readily enough, but scolded them lightly for bringing back a young woman. “Still,” he said lightly, “With one as pretty as this, I think we can make an exception.”

He fried under a threefold glare; affronted from Kiya, protective from Dan, and positively murderous from Raziel.

“Sorry, sorry.” The professor retreated behind his desk. People were often happier with something sturdy between themselves and Raziel. “Well, tell me, did you find anything else?”

“We saw… something…”

Dan mimed and Raziel interpreted his mumbles as they tried to describe something neither of them had really understood. “A dog, and a lizard – or possibly a snake – but both were men. They were seeking entry to the tomb, but for what we could not say.”

Dan tapped him on the shoulder and made ‘whoosh, whoosh’ noises. “Yes, yes, I was getting to that. They left in an… air… ship? Blue. Powered by two flames…” The sentence having got several miles away from him, Raziel fell silent. Kift seemed to understand anyway.

“A rocket ship? Hmm… and this watch is engraved with the initials R.P… You found these in a house just off Museum Square, you say?”

They nodded.

“Yes, I believe I know who’s behind this madness. Yes, I’m certain. The name of our enemy is Lord Palethorn. He bought the title, then tried to gain respectability by joining the Magicians’ Circle, but they expelled him after he started experimenting with black magic. Frightful, frightful man…” He shook his head.

He may have continued if Winston hadn’t appeared at that moment, flustered and panicked.

“Dan! Raz! You need to get to the freakshow now. The imps have overthrown the ringmaster and they’re building an army of elephant bots. If we don’t stop them, there won’t be anything of London left to save!”

“Ah, er, er…” the professor floundered for a moment, but regained his composure swiftly. “Right, you two head over there, I’ll see what I can find out from this young lady.”

Kiya looked up from her inspection of one of the green hands which scampered about the lab like rats. “Do be careful out there. The world needs heroes like you.”

Glad of his inability to blush, Dan practically fled the room. Raziel followed along behind more slowly. No one had ever called him a hero before.

*

The Freakshow wasn’t hard to find. All they needed to do was follow the posters, and the sound of hammering interspersed with the occasional crash.

Dan looked around at the tents, stalls and sideshows. “Did you have anything like this where you come from, Raz?”

Raziel shook his head. “My entire family evolved into twisted, inhuman monstrosities. If there were such a place in Nosgoth, we would have been the exhibits- Ah! Bugger off!” He kicked the offending imp claws first, neatly eviscerating it and sending it flying into the one behind.

That was just the beginning. The imps were more of a nuisance than anything, but they bit and threw things and got underfoot, and occasionally tried to steal their weapons. With undead performers weighing in against them as well, it was a relief to get into a quiet area of the dark carnival. There were still no living humans in sight, but the animated skeleton seemed friendly enough when he offered them to “Try your look, test your skills! Shoot all the targets and win a prize! Three tries for a penny!”

Dan rummaged in his tunic and produced a tarnished copper piece.

“Daniel, have you forgotten something?” Raziel asked as he was handed pellet gun. “We are supposed to be saving the world.”

“Something’s wrong. This way you can tell me what it is and work out some pent up aggression at the same time.”

“Alright.” Raziel took aim. “I don’t trust Kift. He knew about Palethorn, where he lived. How many megalomaniacal necromancers are there in this city?” A pellet hit the target with such force, it ricocheted off Dan’s breastplate and hit a passing magician, who took one look at Raziel and decided not to bother him. “He’s hiding something, mark my words. I don’t-” he struggled with the reloading mechanism- “like being played.”

Dan wanted to say, “I know what happened with you and Moebius, but not everyone is out to get you. Maybe Professor Kift really is on our side.” He didn’t because Raziel was still shooting the targets as if he had a personal grudge against each and every one. He didn’t want Raziel to hold a grudge against him.

“Congratulations!” the skeleton said from the safety of the stall’s counter. “Here’s your prize!” He dropped a large stuffed rabbit on the wood and retreated behind the safety of an awning.

Raziel reached forward to pick it up and stopped. “If I take this now I’ll get blood on it. Could you look after it until I come back?”

“Right ho, guv,” the skeleton said, clearly willing to agree to anything to get rid of him.

“What are you going to do with that thing?” Dan asked as they walked away.

“I have no idea.”

“Do you even want it?”

“Not really.”

“You could leave it at the stall.”

“I won that thing. I’m keeping it,” Raziel said with the sort of bloody minded determination which had propelled him through three wars, two worlds, and death itself. Dan thought it best not to argue, especially when they almost got flattened by a falling ballerina.

That word normally conjures up images of slender, nymph like maidens prancing and soaring through the air with graceful ease. This woman was easily three times the weight of any you would find on stage, bearded, giggling, and dead. Even when she was cut down by two swords working in unison she still treated it as the greatest laugh she had ever had.

Dan didn’t want to admit quite how unnerving that was. “Would Kiya like it, do you thing?”

“What? _That?_ ”

“No, the rabbit.”

“Oh. It’s possible,” he conceded.

“If you’re worried about embarrassing yourself, I can give it to her. It’s too late for me on that front.”

“The ladies like someone who can make them laugh,” Raziel snickered. “You really lost your head over her.”

“I still don’t know how my skull fell off just by bowing,” Dan grumbled. “And she’s only nineteen. I wouldn’t dream of- especially not with her last husband…” he tailed off. The details of Kiya’s life were as vague as they were unpleasant and no one had any real wish to ask further.

A side tent gave them the first glimpse of what they would be facing. Raziel absolutely did not leap backwards when he saw the copper beast wreathed in shadows. There was not a moment when he thought the half-finished machine would attack, and Daniel’s arm around him was completely unnecessary, but nevertheless appreciated.

No words were spoken as they killed the imps working on it, but they headed for the exit incredibly swiftly once they were dealt with.

*

After a little more exploration, the big top loomed before them. There was a certain amount of inevitability about it. They shared a look and entered.

The tent was lined with tiers of bench seats, as if an invisible audience were watching the mechanical elephant parade around the sawdust ring, metal gleaming under the light of the carbide lamps suspended far above.

Dan wasted no time in firing at it, focusing on the reinforced dome protecting its pilot. At least, he fired six shots before realising he had run out of bullets. “Oh,” he said as it turned towards them. “That didn’t do much.”

“Oh, I don’t know. You’ve made it very angry.”

They ducked out of the way of the plasma fired from its trunk, Dan diving to the left and taking cover in the stands, Raziel running between its legs and taking the opportunity to hit it with the Reaver. It was like striking a mountain.

He massaged some feeling back into his hand as the elephant turned slowly. “To summarise: we can’t use melee weapons, we can’t shoot it-”

“-Because we don’t have any ammo-” Dan supplied from behind some scaffolding.

“Right. And we can’t run away. Our enemy has superior fire power and brute strength, and apparently its only weakness is cornering. How exactly are we going to get out of this alive?”

“We’re not.”

“Still the same optimistic spirit as ever.”

“Wait, what does this do?”

There was a clunk, the clicking of a chain moving very fast, and several hundred pounds of glass and metal missed Raziel by inches.

“Daniel! You could have killed me, you foolish-” Raziel paused mid-rant. “Are there controls for all the lights up there?”

“Yes. Sorry, I’ll come down now.”

“No! No, stay there. Pull them when I say.”

Raziel turned his attention back to the elephant. He could just make out the imp flicking levers and pressing switches as it backed it up to charge. He glanced up and moved a few paces to the right.

The elephant charged. Raziel dived sideways. It turned towards him again ponderously, feet clumping uncertainly on the sandy floor. The light glinted off the swaying dome.

“Now!”

The light plummeted. It hit the central dome, crushing glass to powder and snapping support struts like twigs. There was a sound of tortured metal and the beast collapsed almost gracefully into the dust.

A few moments later there was a series of thumps as Dan tried not to fall all the way to the ground. “Do you think that’s an end to it? I don’t think there are enough imps left to try rebuilding.”

“Good enough for me.”

They stopped by the target range on their way out to pick up Raziel’s prize and enquire as to where a skeleton could buy pistol bullets at this time of night.

“See that bloke by the gates? That spiv will buy and sell anything to anyone. Have a good day, gents.”

There was a little difficulty getting the Spiv to accept coins bearing King Peregrine’s crest, but he agreed readily enough once Dan assured him they were genuine gold.

Rather lighter in pocket and somewhat encumbered by a large stuffed rabbit, they returned to the lab. Professor Kift and Kiya were leaning over something strapped to a table, having a debate which completely went over the newcomers’ heads.*

“So the soul is bound by the body, not an external artefact- ah, my heroes return!”

Dan just caught sight of a zombie strapped to the slab before Kiya enveloped him and Raziel in a hug.

“Ah, you’re back. Good, good,” Kift said, apparently oblivious to the slightly embarrassed exchange of a stuffed animal going on behind him. “No time to chat, I’m afraid. Winston says he saw Palethorn’s lackeys hanging around Greenwich Observatory. See what you can do.”

-

*Admittedly, a lot of things went over Raziel’s head due to his height.


	5. Greenwich

The professor’s instructions had been characteristically vague. Unfortunately, so were his directions.

Raziel glared at the sign as if it had personally offended him. “Green Witch Naval Academy,” he read. “He said go through the naval academy at Grenitch. How badly have we gone wrong?”

“Could be the same place. Back home there’s a Bitch Road lined with beech trees. Things get shortened and mispronounced over the years.”

“Is a written language not meant to prevent that sort of thing? Your world is strange.” Nosgoth’s cultural stagnation had something to be said for it, Raziel decided, as they made their way into the zombie haunted grounds.

The dead sailors staggered around the place with even less purpose than most revenants, but hauling ropes and sails in life, coupled with rigor mortis, had left them with arms like teak in death. Even after the nearest ones had been despatched, Dan was still slightly stunned from a lucky – or from his perspective, unlucky – blow to the head, which may be why he didn’t register Raziel shouting at him to duck until it was too late.

A gull swooped down, pulled the skull from his shoulders, and flew off into the night.

“Daniel? Daniel! Can you hear me?”

Raziel’s rising panic gave way to hysterics when Dan’s headless body pushed itself upright and stumbled around patting the empty space above his vertebral column.

Eventually, Raziel recovered himself enough to come up with some sort of a plan. Dan needed his head back, even if it was rather amusing to watch him blunder into a cannon repeatedly. He grabbed the skeleton by the shoulders before he could walk into it yet again and got a sword swung at him for his trouble.

“It’s only me. You are in no danger, I promise- of course, you cannot hear me.” He closed his hand around Dan’s wrist to prevent another panicked attempt at stabbing.

The presence of claws not engaged in tearing him apart apparently registered and Dan stopped struggling.

“The bird went in that direction, so we are going to follow and hope it landed somewhere accessible.” Even though Daniel couldn’t hear him, Raziel still felt better for saying it. With difficulty, he piloted him across the hummocky grass until they came to a building with a bird’s nest just visible on its roof.

“Stay here,” he said, in what he hoped was a loud enough voice to be heard from the roof. Considering Dan didn’t immediately start wandering about when he let go, Raziel decided it was safe to leave him while he retrieved his head.

The climb was made difficult by the sheet metal on the outside of the building and positively treacherous by the nesting birds.

“Shit!” Raziel’s claws slipped and he found himself dangling by one arm. It was at this point that the bird decided to dive at him, but on the plus side he already had an arm free.

Dan heard a startled squawk, and a few moments later saw Raziel haul himself onto the roof. “Razzie! Can you lend me a hand?”

“I can give you an entire body in a moment.”

After a couple of false starts, including smacking himself in the face, Dan got his head back. He made no complaint about Raziel taking the lead into the docks, but insisted on keeping his pistol on hand in case of any more aerial attacks.

Raziel stopped suddenly and Dan nearly walked into him. He peered over his shoulder at a couple of corpses lying about the quay.

“Those bodies are not going to stay lifeless.”

“Really, Raziel, not everything is trying to kill you.” To demonstrate, Dan stepped forward and prodded one with his sword. “See, everything’s- aargh!”

Some sort of green tentacled creature hopped out from behind a pile of crates and attached itself to the dead sailor’s head. The reanimated man leapt up, the octopoid creature proving a far more competent puppet master than Palethorn’s magic. It lunged and jumped and bit, and only abandoned its host after the body had been chopped to ribbons. Raziel gave chase when it tried to flee and Dan had to cover his eyes when he caught up with it.

“Don’t you think that was a little… much?” he suggested.

Raziel shook the ichor smothered chunks of tentacle off his claws. “Was it?”

“…Let’s just go before any more turn up.”

They picked their way across the dried up docks, clambering across rusted hulls and rotting decks until they made it to the opposite quay. Another of the squid-like creatures hopped about the damp stones, noticed the newcomers, and started towards them, spitting acid.

Dan put his hand on Raziel’s sword arm. “Don’t bother. We can just step on the thing if it goes for us. There aren’t any bodies around for it to-mmf!” The end of the sentence was muffled by an octopus wrapping itself around his head.

“Get it off! Get it off!”

Raziel sank his claws in and pulled. The creature came off with a pop and coiled weakly around his hands, trying to bite him with what little strength it had left. A swift slice with a free claw and its lifeless body flopped onto the cobbles.

“Raz? You know what I said about going overboard? Next time, just ignore me, would you?”

Raziel nodded and hopped over the wall into the observatory grounds.

Dan scrambled up after him and landed with a thud on the other side. “Oh…”

What was on the other side, mostly, was madness. The grounds were crawling with zombies, some possessed by octopi. Dan was sure he could see a gull trying to peck one off a zombie’s head. The only good thing he could see was that the door to the observatory was open.

“Do you really want to fight your way through that lot?”

“Most palpably not.”

“Me neither. Run?” he suggested.

Raziel nodded. “Run.”

One very successful mad dash later, they found themselves in a large open room with mesh walkways overhead, a tank of water along one side, and a couple of possessed zombies. It was still an improvement on what was waiting outside.

Their swords cut through undead flesh easily enough, at least when their agile adversaries came within range, but the little tentacle creatures themselves were harder to hit. This time it was Raziel’s turn to fall foul of one. He staggered backwards, clawing at the thing wrapped around his head, sent into panic by the all too familiar sensation of tentacles upon him. Even after five centuries, some part of him was still in his timeless spectral prison.

He blundered backwards, landed heavily on a lever, and managed to pull the thing off him while gears clanked and spun above him.

“What did I break this time?” he asked muzzily as Dan helped him up.

“Nothing, you’re fine. Honestly.” He paused to brush some thankfully unidentified pieces of squid from his hair. “Something moved about over the water tank. We might get a better look from the gantries.”

“There is _something_ in there.” Raziel squinted down through the murky water at the vaguely triangular shape at the bottom of the tank. “On the whole I would prefer not to jump in and get it.”

“Shame this thing isn’t a bit bigger,” Dan said, tapping the side of a submarine just about large enough to house a small dog. “We could get a better look at the thing. Maybe get it out by using that crane.”

“We would need someone inside to give orders while the other pulls the levers, correct?”

“Yes… Raziel, why are you looking at me like that?”

“Because we need to use your head.”

Before Dan could protest, Raziel pulled his skull from his shoulders and placed it in the submarine.

“Just point left, right and forward,” he said as he closed the door. “I will be able to see you from the ground.”

The first one fingered sign Dan made was not useful in positioning the crane, but did illustrate his feelings quite succinctly.

It was an odd sensation, directing Raziel’s progress with arms he couldn’t see. He could see what looked slightly like a folded up umbrella and a shadow which eventually hovered over it.

“Right, it’s in position.”

When nothing happened, he gave a thumbs up sign, which Raziel did seem to understand. The crane dropped, picked up the mystery object, and rose out of view. A few moments later the submarine also returned to the surface. Dan felt his way to the door, opened it, and retrieved his skull before Raziel could get any more bright ideas.

“Was it worth it?” he called down.

“Err… possibly?” Raziel said with a sort of hopeful sheepishness. “We appear to have acquired a set of bellows.”

“You pulled my head off for a set of bellows?”

“Sorry.” Pointing out that it wasn’t even the most extreme reaction he’d had to a problem was unlikely to placate him, so Raziel settled for holding out the waterlogged instruments in an apologetic gesture.

“Never mind. Let’s see what else is in here. And _ask_ then next time you want my head for something.”

Suitably chastised, Raziel nodded and followed Dan along the sloping gantries to the roof.

“Now that is an airship I recognise,” Dan said as he looked up at the hot air balloon tethered to the floor. “Looks like those bellows are going to be useful after all.”

*

Not too far away as the balloon flies, an altogether more sinister scene was playing itself out.

Lord Palethorn watched his minions work with poorly veiled impatience. What had he done to be lumbered with such a pair of incompetents? The spell had not left him unchanged, but who had been the one snatching at the scattering paper instead of screaming? If they had shown a bit more gumption, they wouldn’t need to be here at all.

“Mander, is it ready?” he growled.

“Yes, master.” The lizard skinned man allowed a hint of pride to creep into his voice as he adjusted the last few knobs and levers. “At the press of a button, the great scope will find all the pages of the spell book.”

“Good. Start the machine, start the machine!”

The telescope rumbled into life, scanning London for the tell-tale spikes of magic which would give away the last of Zarok’s long buried secrets. Palethorn chuckled darkly as the scope rumbled across the sky. “Yes… soon, soon it will all be mine…”

His monologue was cut short by distant bickering getting closer by the second.

“I told you, you need to pump harder!”

“And I’m telling _you_ that you need to steer!”

“Why? We’re going right towards them.”

“We are going to _crash_ into them, you mean!”

There was the beginning of a curse, shortly followed by the sound of breaking glass.

“What the devil?” Palethorn just had time to mutter before the airship hit the telescope and brought the entire machine crashing down.

His cries of rage subsided along with the falling wreckage in favour of a voice of calm, seething interest. “What do we have here?” His eyes flicked from Daniel to Raziel as they pulled themselves upright. “Meddlesome fools, do you know what you’ve ruined?”

He snatched a readout from underneath the shattered needle which had scribed it and turned away. “Mander, deal with these two,” he called over his shoulder as he left.

Mander brushed some dust from his jacket. “Time to break some bones, Dogman.”

He bounced like an excited puppy. “Bones, bones, bones!”

“Shut up,” Mander hissed, hitting him with his cane.

Dogman whimpered then loped towards them.

“That is no way to treat your pets,” Raziel said and scratched at Dogman’s face. For his pains, he was struck with a fist like a mallet and thrown backwards into Dan.

A magical attack from Mander followed, sending them both sliding into the side of the ruined telescope.

“We need to end this quickly.” Raziel hauled himself up and drew his sword.

“Remember they’re still alive. Please don’t kill them unless you have to.”

“They are trying to kill us. I think that is a case of having to… alright, fine!”

Raziel threw Mander back with a telekinetic attack and tried the same on Dogman. It barely made him stumble, but gave Dan an opening to bring his shield into contact with his face. He went backwards, Dan still holding on and smashing his shield into him again and again until he stopped moving.

Raziel shifted his focus to Mander, who was throwing spells around with abandon. He dodged and dived his way through them, raised the Reaver, and brought the pommel down hard on his head.

He dragged the recumbent body over to where Dogman lay and started searching through his pockets.

“Raziel, what are you doing?”

“Looking for clues. Here, take these.”

Dan eyed the handful of notes. “We can’t rob them while they’re unconscious!”

“I do not intend to wait for them to wake up. Palethorn is long gone. We should take these gentlemen back to the lab for questioning.”

“No. I know what your questioning’s like.”

“Fine, but I’m still keeping the money.”

Raziel reluctantly allowed Dan to drag him away from Palethorn’s minions and back to the lab, where he caught the tail end of a conversation that seemed more suited to Melchiahim workshops than this world.

“No, Professor – that is an artery.”

“Ah, wrong jar. I’ll just-” Kift turned around and saw the returning pair. He quickly threw a sheet over whatever he and Kiya had been working on.

“Well done my friends,” he said with more optimism than accuracy in the case of Raziel. “You thwarted Palethorn! Winston told me about his fiendish scheme, and it’s our first piece of good news. If he hasn’t got all the pages of the spell book, then he hasn’t got full control of the undead. And that leads me on to our second piece of good news. It turns out that Kiya is quite the skilled embalmer. If you can get a page of the spell book, then with her knowledge of Egyptian death magic, we may yet be able to wrestle control away from him. It’s just the chance we need.”


	6. Kew Gardens

Palethorn looked up from the torn and yellowed page as his servant entered the courtyard.

“Ah, Mander, it’s a good thing our experiment in Greenwich turned up a page of the spell book before those weird little skeleton monsters chose to interrupt everything.”

“Yes master,” Mander said dutifully, not meeting his eye.

“I trust their demise was suitably unpleasant.”

This was the part Mander had been waiting for, and not one he relished. “Master,” he began. “They proved to be quite, er, resilient foes.” He closed his eyes. “They managed to evade us.”

“What?!” Palethorn turned on him, and for the span of a sentence Mander was subjected to his undiluted Cockney rage. “Good grief man, what do I pay ya for?” Almost as soon as it had appeared, the lower class bellowing was covered by a thing veneer of aristocratic calm which almost hid the inner inferno. “The two of you are worse than useless,” he growled. “I just hope the spell’s been a success, then I can dispense with your services.”

Palethorn turned away from him, strode towards the balcony and pulled a lever, watching the scene in the room below with interest.

A man who had been peacefully stacking flowerpots looked up as the portcullis behind him rose, allowing Palethorn’s latest experiment to enter. The creature stood as high as a man, but no one could mistake it for human. It shuffled forward on bifurcated roots, a pumpkin atop its thick stalk doing service as its head and a tongue like frond hanging out of a crack across it which more resembled a gaping maw. The man backed away, screaming.

Mander turned his head away and covered his eyes, shuddering when the cries were abruptly cut off. Palethorn watched in interest as the infection took hold. The head was the first to swell, then the body withered, turned a pallid green, and within a minute there were two of the pumpkin creatures standing in the room.

*

Winston tried to explain the situation as he led Dan and Raziel to Kew Gardens. “The entire place is in lockdown. If anyone’s still alive in there we need to get them out.”

“I still don’t understand why we’ve got these things,” Dan said, waving the vial the Professor had given him before they left.

“It’s an antidote, or at least half of one. Mix it with some pumpkin sap and give it to anyone who’s been infected.”

“Infected? You mean to tell me that those things can turn humans into copies of themselves?” Raziel thought back to the first time they had fought these creatures, of the abandoned carts. How many of them had once been human?

They were not good thoughts to be having in such a treacherous environment. Dan had to practically pull him into the side of a greenhouse to avoid being bowled over by a runaway pumpkin almost twice the height of a man.

When the rumbling died away, Dan said the words that both of them had been thinking. “This is going to be even worse than last time, isn’t it?”

Raziel nodded. “We need to hurry. If anyone is still alive in there, they may not stay that way for long.”

Around the corner they encountered even more malevolent plant life. Pumpkins bounced across the lawns, exploding on contact with walls, shrubs, or anything else they made contact with, which almost included Dan.

Raziel, the more agile of the two, piloted him across the deadly assault course and dragged him into the nearest shelter, which happened to be a potting shed. There were a couple of trays of seedlings thankfully devoid of homicidal tendencies, a stack of plant pots, and a metal wheel with a scrap of paper pinned on it. “‘Replacement water tank valve,’” Dan read. “Could be useful if the plants want watering.”

“I care very little about what the plants want, especially considering our deaths may be on the list.” Raziel opened to door again gingerly. “Wait until that pumpkin goes past and we will have a clear run to the main building.”

After a brief mad dash they came to a large balconied room which seemed to contain half a forest. Dan looked over the railings and through the dense foliage to see a woman trying to fend off one of the pumpkin creatures with an umbrella.

Without a thought of personal safety or sense, he jumped off the balcony and onto a nearby tree branch. He looked for another which would support his weight, jumped, missed completely, and plummeted.

His fall was broken by a monster pursuing a man through the undergrowth, his weight smashing the pumpkin and showering everything nearby in seeds and pith.

Dan staggered upright in time to see Raziel glide down to ground level, draw his sword and neatly decapitate a monster from behind. He bent down to retrieve the sap and got hit by an unexpected umbrella to the side of the head.

“Ow. Madam please- stop that. We are here to rescue you, not add to your troubles.”

Her eyes narrowed, but at least her umbrella remained static. “I should very much like to see that, young man, considering that this room no longer has a staircase.” She waved the point of her umbrella at a pile of twisted metal almost entirely obscured by crawling ivy.

There were more pressing issues, but entire trains of thought had been derailed and only one line was still open. “How?”

“Those vines-” she jabbed her umbrella in the general direction of the ivy- “started moving like a nest of snakes. Young Harris tried to pull them off the railings before they could pull them down, but they took hold of him and- and-” She rummaged in her bag for a handkerchief and dabbed her eyes. Raziel gingerly patted her on the shoulder and looked around for Dan. He was so much better at dealing with this sort of thing.

Dan had just about managed to calm the near hysterical man and convince him to come out of the foliage when he heard more sobbing. Resisting the urge to ask Raziel what he had done _this time_ , he took her gently by the arm. “Shh, shh, it’s going to be alright,” he said as clearly as possible, which wasn’t very. “You’re safe, we’re going to get you out of here.”

“But the stairs,” she said between sobs. “We’re all going to die in this terrible place. Gillian could already be dead and I wouldn’t know.”

“There are more people in here?”

She nodded, sniffling. “She was heading towards the hothouse with Jules the last time I saw her.”

“Will you be alright here while we go and find them?”

“Go. If you can save my granddaughter I will be forever in your debt.”

Dan inclined his head.

“Raziel, we’re going!”

That proved to be easier said than done without the use of a staircase. Scrambling up a tree in full armour is not a task for the weak or faint hearted, but by the time Dan dropped back onto the balcony, he rather felt like both. He let Raziel help him up, not fully trusting his shaking legs to support him.

The walk to the hothouse was thankfully short and flat enough for even the most delicate of dispositions, which Raziel got thumped for pointing out. Eyes creasing in amusement, he opened the door and met a scene of vegetable carnage.

Two young women were surrounded by a host of pumpkin creatures. One of the girl’s heads was already beginning to grow, and the other seemed more concerned with her companion than fending off her own attackers.

Raziel ran towards them, swinging his sword wildly. He was more concerned with distracting the monsters than killing them. There would be plenty of time for that when the ladies were not in danger of joining their number.

The creatures scattered and converged around the new threat. Dan cut through the few stragglers and practically tipped the antidote down the woman’s throat. She choked and spluttered, but the swelling subsided and the orange hue left her face.

Elegant the rescue was not, but it was efficient. Raziel absentmindedly picked pieces of fruit out of his hair as he scouted around the area for any monsters they may have missed. Satisfied that they were alone, he finally said what had been on his mind since the first rescue.

“Is there another exit? I do not relish the thought of trying to get you all through a field of exploding pumpkins unharmed.”

“There was the flower walk,” one of the women offered. “Jules and I tried to get out that way, but the petals had all closed.”

“They need more humidity, otherwise the flowers close up with the heat.” Jules supplied, “I think the water tank on the roof must have finally broken.”

“I think I can fix that,” Dan said, hoping the valve he had picked up was the only part that needed replacing. “Raziel will take you to the others then we can get out of here.”

Raziel didn’t look too thrilled to be left babysitting humans, but accepted that it was a better option that trusting Dan to help anyone climb out of the sunken garden.

He sighed. “Come along, then, you two.”

*

Once he saw the roof access, Dan immediately regretted his decision. A small balcony led to what the optimistic would call a metal ladder. It would be more accurate to describe it as a series of large staples driven into the stone. The ground already looked a long way down. He gulped and started climbing.

“I need to stop doing this,” Dan mumbled as he crawled away from the edge of the roof and stood up.

“Water tank, water tank- ah!”

He ran towards it, saw the cracks and holes in the roof where fast growing plants had forced their way out, and slowed down.

Dan was not mechanically minded, but one problem was so obvious that even he noticed it. Someone had presumably tried to shut the water off here when all hell had broken loose downstairs. It had worked, but the old rusted valve had been manhandled one time too many and sheared off, leaving a small reddish lump attached to the spindle. The remnants of it crumbled at his touch and it wasn’t hard to remove the last few pieces. The new valve protested at being fitted onto rust clogged threads, but with a bit of brute force and a horrible grating sound it relented and slid into place.

Expecting turning the valve to be equally difficult, Dan heaved on the wheel with all his strength. It spun easily, he skidded across the floor, and startled screams echoed up from the greenhouse below.

Back inside he found a somewhat damp and unimpressed group waiting for him by a staircase made entirely of large, tropical flowers.

“Tell me, Daniel. When I say ‘humid,’ is ‘downpour’ the first word that springs to mind?” Raziel glared up at him through sodden locks like a resentful cat.

“Sorry.”

Raziel sighed. “Come on, before your armour starts rusting.”


	7. Dankenstein

By the time they returned to the lab, Raziel had dried out and was more inclined to laugh than scowl, but his rare good mood was shattered by some malformed monstrosity charging out of the door and almost bowling him over.

A few moments later, Kiya followed.

“Did you catch it?”

“What the hell was it?” Raziel asked.

“It was going to be an arm.” She looked past them into the darkness beyond and sighed. “Come in. Things have changed in your absence, and not for the better.”

The lab had been transformed since they had been away. Kift had certainly got power to the place, and not just that. Between the metal towers and glass trapped lightning was a currently empty slab and a shelf of specimen jars which hinted at its emptiness being only a temporary affair.

Tinkering with one of them was Professor Kift, who almost dropped the jar when he saw them.

“Thank goodness you’re back, and not a moment too soon! I should have paid more attention to those plans you found in Kensington.”

“Palethorn has created a giant metal monster,” Kiya interjected. “If we are not to be utterly crushed, we need to make one of our own.”

“The thing that ran past us?” Dan asked, really not wanting to have to hunt it down.

“That was my fault, I’m afraid. One of my old experiments was reanimating dead limbs.” The professor looked rather uncomfortable as he admitted, “Unfortunately they developed a life of their own and I was forced to release them into the sewers.”

“Have you ever met someone called Knell?” Raziel asked. “Sometimes you do remind me of him.”

“I, er, I don’t remember any gentleman of that name…”

“If you had met him, you would remember,” he said with absolute certainty. That bifurcated face tended to stick in the mind.

“Please, we have no time for this. We have a head, but you must get us limbs.”

“She’s right,” Kift added. “That cad Palethorn walked in here bold as brass and said that if we didn’t fight, he’d take Kiya. I saw that thing of his, and as we are we haven’t got a hope. We need those limbs.”

Raziel drew his sword, then paused. “Why take Kiya? What would he gain?”

Her scalpel rattled against the tray as she answered. “The same thing they hoped to steal from my tomb. An embalmer, a necromancer, and – I fear – a consort.” Her knuckles whitened.

“We’re not going to let that happen,” Dan said.

“Not while we still stand,” Raziel promised.

When Kiya smiled it was like the sun had broken through the smoke drowned city to fill the underground room with light and warmth. “Thank you. A thousand times, thank you.”

She led them both into a dank antechamber where a number of the limbs had apparently been lured, and left with a final warning not to damage the body parts they were to collect.

Raziel stared. He had thought that in his millennia as vampire and wraith he had seen everything a body could be twisted into. He had been wrong.

Dan, thankful for his lack of a stomach, wanted nothing more than to run off and hide somewhere, but there were more fates than his at stake here. He almost regretted agreeing to this, but thinking of Kiya… no, he couldn’t contemplate that.

“Should we start with those two on this side of the railway tracks?” he suggested. “They look almost human.”

The twisted homunculi shrank back at their approach, cowering behind bulging veined arms almost as wide as their torsos. With only one each, they looked laughably unbalanced, yet they were anything but harmless. Cornered like rats, one took a swing at Raziel and almost knocked him off his feet.

Dan lunged in with a swift jab to the body then dodged back out of range. The creature clutched its chest reflexively, leaving itself open to a decapitating blow. The body started to shrivel almost immediately, leaving only the large, musclebound right arm.

Raziel brought his sword down hard on the other’s shoulder. To his surprise, it severed easily and the being which had grown from it withered like cut grass as soon as they were twinned.

“I’ll take these back to Kiya,” Dan volunteered, fumbling the arms in his haste to pick them up. Raziel shook his head fondly and helped him rearrange the precariously stacked limbs.

“Don’t dally. I do not relish the prospect of fighting these things alone.” With that, Raziel hopped over the train tracks, leaving Dan to make his own way back through the damp winding passages.

By the time he found his way back to the lab, Kiya was scrubbed up and waiting by the slab. In a surgical smock she looked more comfortable than Dan had ever seen her, not that he could imagine many people would take forcible mummification very well.

“Um, I, er, brought you these.” He tried to hold the arms out for her, but only succeeded in dropping them on his own foot.

Kiya muffled her giggles behind a gloved hand and bent to pick them up. Tried to pick them up. With difficulty, she hauled one onto the slab.

Dan nudged it a bit further in to prevent it from sliding off and set the other down beside it without any apparent difficulty.

“Are you alright with those?”

“Yes, thank you. Now you only need to get – _that_?”

Dan turned around to see Raziel dragging a struggling, spider legged torso almost as large as he was into the lab.

The wraith looked up, registered the expressions of mild horror, and decided to explain himself. “I was not entirely certain-” he grunted as it kicked him in the pelvis- “exactly how to incapacitate it – ow – without causing damage to the torso itself.”

Kiya, used to dealing with eccentricities of the upper classes in life, recovered herself quickly. “Put it on the slab, please, and hold it down.”

Dan helped Raziel manhandle the creature and pin it onto the table.

Hands barely shaking, Kiya took a scalpel to its mandibles with less than surgical precision. She studied its now harmless mouth carefully. With a suddenness that made Dan start, she buried the scalpel point first into the roof of its mouth.

“Professor, please pass me a kidney bowl.”

Calmly, she placed the scalpel back on the tray and caught the green ichor in the proffered bowl.

When it stopped struggling, she smiled sweetly at Raziel and Daniel. “Thank you. The professor and I can deal with this now.”

Dan nodded to her and fled. Raziel waited long enough to make certain the torso was dead and followed more sedately.

Kiya watched them go with a warm smile in her eyes, at least until the bowl started overflowing. Then it was a race to find another receptacle before too much blood spilled onto the floor.

The Professor had finished funnelling the ichor into a suitable jar and was about to join Kiya in scrubbing the worst of the mess off the flagstones when the two men returned. Dan had a disembodied leg slung over his shoulder, as Raziel presumably had at some point recently, but it was now dragging along the floor behind him. It was rather sweet in a strange sort of way, Kiya thought as she took one end to stop him tripping over the thing.

Dan hauled the other one onto the slab beside it. “That’s everything,” he said with obvious relief. “Time to work your magic, princess.”

“Erm, almost everything.”

When understanding hadn’t dawned after a few seconds of embarrassed silence Kiya gave up and pointed at the… gap.

“What? You want us to get an ar- erm…” Dan tailed off.

“Shall we say ‘pelvis’?” she suggested.

“Yes, let’s. Come along Daniel.” Raziel took hold of the skeleton’s arm and marched him smartly out of the lab.

An echoey argument started part way down the tunnel. Kiya decided she didn’t want to hear it.

“Professor? Do you have enough stored lightning to animate this?”

“Oh? Oh, yes, yes, plenty. Help me move the batteries over here, will you?”

He noticed her blank look and remembered he was talking to someone who had lived and died before the advent of plumbing. “That is to say, the lightning jars?”

She nodded and walked over. The remnants of the blood could be mopped up later.

The reanimation equipment got set up with the minimum amount of difficulty and bickering, mostly because Dan and Raziel were still limb hunting. Kiya set up the drips ready for filling the creature’s veins with new blood and tested the stitching on the arms. There wasn’t much more she could do until the legs could be attached.

“I had always thought,” Professor Kift said, trying to make light conversation, “that embalmers were always male.”

“Yes, well,” Kiya looked away demurely. “It is amazing what a little determination can do.”

Another voice cut into the conversation.

“We have already agreed that we are never going to speak of this again. On the whole, I would appreciate it if the two of you entered into the same arrangement.”

Raziel was standing by the doorway, Daniel just behind him, holding the final piece of this macabre puzzle and giving every impression of blushing but the blush itself. Kiya opened her mouth.

“If it makes you happy, I don’t see why not.” Kiya closed her mouth into a momentary frown as Kift answered for her.

“ _What_ do you not want us to speak of?” she asked.

Daniel walked forward without meeting her eye and wordlessly and dropped the man’s pelvis in place. It was definitely a man’s. There couldn’t really be any doubt on that point.

“…oh.”

“Yes.”

“Professor, do you have a spare sheet?”

*

By a miracle, a pair of shorts got procured for the behemoth in very short order. Kiya fitted the final pieces together with more haste than professionalism and waited for the professor to bring in the head.

“Right, here we are.” The little man staggered in under the weight of the specimen jar.

Kiya reached her hands out. “Professor, please, let me.”

“No, no, it’s alright-”

He tottered towards the slab and into the half dried pool of blood. His foot slipped, Professor Kift went down, and the jar flew into the air.

Kiya went to help him on instinct, then sense took over and she ran towards the now falling jar, but far too late. Raziel dived for it, only to collide with Dan who was also running to intercept. Time slowed as the jar hit the flagstones and glass exploded out, became a chrysanthemum of light for the space of a heartbeat, then fell and brought the world back with the tinkling of broken glass.

The formaldehyde spilled across the floor, leaving the head exposed to the air. Kiya tried to snatch it up, but the degradation was almost immediate. She was left with a handful flesh that was almost liquid and a skull that was already dissolving into a spongy mass. Keeping her head bowed she blinked away her gathering tears. It wasn’t the mess that distressed her – that was all part and parcel of an embalmer’s life – but the knowledge of what that meant. Their only hope lay in splinters at her feet.

Kift got to his feet and stood by her. To his credit, he didn’t try to lie about their chances.

“Oh dear,” he said. “We’re doomed.”

Dan patted Kiya on the shoulder, trying not to look at what she was still holding. “Let’s not lose our heads. There must be something we can do.”

“That was the only head we had! It took me weeks to put together. They don’t grow on trees you know.”

Raziel tuned out the professor’s wittering. “Lose our heads,” he repeated slowly. “Daniel, I have an idea. Do you remember what I promised you in Greenwich?”

“Yes,” he began uncertainly, then followed Raziel’s gaze to the headless body still lying on the slab. “Oh no. No, no, no, no.”

“Do you so wish for death?” the wraith snapped. “If you do not fight you shall receive it. And what of your promise to Kiya. You would hunt monsters for her, but when it comes to this battle you shy away and leave her slave to another man?”

Kiya watched the exchange in confusion. “What promise, captain? Is there anything you can do?”

Dan sighed. “I don’t even know if it’ll work, but Raziel’s right. We need to at least try.”

To demonstrate what he meant he pulled off his skull, secretly pleased by Kiya’s gasp, and placed it on the stitched together creature’s neck.

His arm fell to his side. That skeleton wasn’t his concern anymore. He lay still for a few moments, getting used to his new body before trying to move. Having flesh again was… nice, he supposed, but everything felt too strange, too unwieldly.

He tried moving an arm and heard a crash. A smell of ozone filled the air.

“Fortsque, don’t move! We’re going to get the rest of the batteries out of the way.”

Dan watched Kift organise Kiya and Raziel into wheeling the tubes of lightning out of his reach then tried again. This time he managed to sit up without incident, but standing was hampered by the operating table scraping backwards as he tried to push himself upright.

After a bit of trial and a lot of error and some help from Raziel and Kiya who were both doing a terrible job of hiding their sniggers, they were ready to face Palethorn. ‘Ready’, as Raziel pointed out, was a relative term, but at least the walk to the venue would give Dan time to get used to his new body.


	8. Iron Slugger

Considering most of the population of London were hiding in their cellars, the boxing match was surprisingly well attended. Raziel was certain that he recognised some demons from their ill-fated incursions into Nosgoth, and a gaggle of vampires had taken over one block of benches. Mostly vampires. He wasn’t sure what species the woman next to the tattooed, purple clad lady was. A part of him wanted to say hylden, but that was ridiculous.

Kiya finished laying out her medical supplies and nudged him, pointing to the centre of the ring where Palethorn stood, every inch the ringmaster of this strange circus.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced, “welcome to Fight Night! Palethorn Promotions, in association with the forces of evil-”

A cheer went up from the inhuman audience.

“-brings you a match to the death between…”

“In the white corner-”

Raziel covered his eyes as Dan started boxing an invisible foe.

“-weighing in at 280 pounds with a record of no fights and no wins… Dankenstein!”

A chorus of boos followed Palethorn’s announcement. He smirked and continued, “And in the black corner, weighing in at 440 pounds with an unbeaten record of forty straight wins-”

The mechanical boxer turned to face them, blood red and far more of an engine than a man. Gears clicked and pistons hissed as he beat his chest, putting on a much more formidable performance than his opponent.

“The unbeatable, the unstoppable, Iron Slugger!”

The crowd cheered and Kiya hid her face in Raziel’s shoulder.

“He’s going to get killed isn’t he?”

Raziel would rather have removed his own head than agree with her, but he was loath to lie about their chances, which currently looked thinner than a hair’s breadth. He settled for making soothing noises while patting her on the back.

Kift was in the ring now. They watched disconsolately as the professor wittered on about fair fighting. Raziel wondered what the point of fighting was if not to put one’s opponent out by any means necessary.

Iron Slugger seemed to agree. He knocked Kift out of the ring with one casual backhanded blow.

Raziel nudged the princess. “They’re starting.”

Kiya looked up just in time to see Dan get punched twice in the face and then double over from a blow to the stomach.

“Please tell me when something good happens.”

“Can you not see?”

“Not with my hand over my eyes.”

Raziel’s subsequent commentary did nothing to raise her hopes.

“Daniel got in a good, solid blow to his shoulder, and again, and- oh, that looked painful. He- For God’s sake, block! Block!”

Kiya knew exactly when he got hit just from Raziel’s wincing. There was a large cheer from the crowd and she looked up.

An arm flew up in the air, trailing a shower of green blood.

“Quickly, get that arm! I can reattach it when the round ends. Please,” she added.

An imp had already picked up the unregarded limb. It giggled to itself as it waddled away from the ring, at least until Raziel jumped on it.

He carried the arm and the slightly leaking imp back to Kiya in a way that reminded her of the palace cats back in Egypt. He waved the imp vaguely in the air.

“I thought it might do for replacing lost blood,” he said.

“Err… thank you.” Kiya lay it on the waxed sheet which was doing service, however badly, as a makeshift operating area. She risked another glance at the ring. “He is losing a lot of blood.”

After a painfully long wait the bell sounded, marking an end to the first round. Dan dragged himself out of the ring and collapsed on the ground.

Raziel shuffled the missing arm into position, wishing Knell was there. Outlandish and even outright disturbing the Melchiahim may have been, there was no one better for putting together ethically questionable stitched together creatures.

Kiya threaded a needle and leaned over him.

“This may hurt a little,” she said apologetically.

“Ow!”

Kift reappeared from wherever he had vanished off to and flicked up a pair of welding goggles. “Oh dear. That hasn’t gone very well at all, has it? I had hoped that the metal fatigue would have started to show by now.”

Dan lifted his head up. “The metal what-ow!”

“Fatigue on the moving parts. I had hoped his joints would weaken.”

“Still seems bloody strong to me,” Dan muttered.

“Yes, well, er, try working on the limbs more. You won’t get anywhere bashing away at all that armour plating.”

“The glass dome on his head looks like another point of weakness,” Raziel suggested.

Kiya tested her stitching and snipped the thread. “Finished, although I cannot promise it will last any longer than last time. I would tell you to rest it if there was any chance of you doing so.”

She patted his arm and helped him upright. “Good luck out there Daniel.”

The second round started with another flurry of blows aimed at Dan’s chest. He retaliated with a poorly aimed uppercut which landed on Iron Slugger’s upraised arm. To his amazement it sheared off and went flying into the crowd.

He was dimly aware of Palethorn sending his lackeys running after it before he got headbutted in the face and lost all interest in anything but the match.

Raziel was already on his feet and running by the time the metallic arm landed in the arms of a waiting imp. Mander reached it first and tried smacking the little creature away with his cane. Raziel bowled into him, initiating a three way tug of war.

Dogman ran towards them with the unstoppability of a steam engine and caused about the same amount of chaos when he crashed into them.

He skidded to a halt and looked around at the scattered participants of the squabble. The imp went sliding across the floor and scuttled away, dragging the arm behind it. Raziel and Mander went flying into the audience.

“I am terribly sorry madam,” Raziel said as he tried to extricate himself from the scantily clad hylden with as little awkwardness as possible, which was still a great deal.

Mander was having some trouble with a demon he had landed on, and it was only a mercy that the beast was bright enough not to try setting fire to him whilst sat on a wooden bench. It settled instead for throwing him to the ground.

In the meantime one of Dan’s legs had given up the ghost and fallen onto the ground. A small group of imps was industriously rolling it to the edge of the ring, where they got ambushed by Dogman. He lifted it over his head and started shaking the protesting imps off. Raziel leapt on his back and started making a spirited attempt to twist his head off.

The crowd, getting two fights for the price of one, cheered as he got thrown against the wall.

Dogman yipped happily and carried his prize back to his master. On the way he tripped over someone’s carelessly stretched out legs. The vampire they belonged to snarled at him as he went over backwards and landed heavily on the floor.

Raziel took the opportunity to snatch the leg from him and scuttle back to Kiya. He drew his sword in case anyone wanted to try taking it back. No one did.

Another wild punch from Dan sent his own arm flying, along with Iron Slugger’s leg. The arm smacked into a burly vampire’s face and the leg seemed to vanish beneath a purple skirt.

“Antony, you alright, mate?” someone asked, and tossed the arm very conveniently towards Raziel.

Mander was having less luck.

“Madam, it _is_ beneath your dress.”

“Men will say anything to get you to lift your skirts. Don’t listen to him Umah.”

“I assure you, I have no such intentions!”

“Are you arguing with my wife?”

“No! I mean yes! I mean… I mean…”

Raziel decided to leave them to it. There wasn’t much chance of Mander retrieving the limb before the next round.

He lifted up the ropes to allow Dan to stagger through and let Kiya get to work.

“Raziel, hold the arm up here, please.”

She swiftly and professionally joined the two together with neat little stitches while Raziel held Dan’s hand and he tried to stifle his yelps.

When it was time to reattach the leg, she paused.

“I am concerned,” she began, starting at the outermost part of his hip, “that your body may be more fragile now from the blood loss. The ichor is part of the reanimation process- oh, sorry!”

Kiya brushed against him and moved her hand away so quickly she almost unthreaded her needle.

“Part of the reanimating process,” Dan prompted, trying to think about anything but the fact that Kiya was… well, where she was.

“Yes, well – turn over please – the blood has a certain amount of magic in it and this helps the body remain intact. If you take too much damage, the body will become unstable.”

“And the animating soul loses its anchor to this plane?”

“Raziel, I did not know you were a scholar. Exactly so. Fortunately for you, Daniel, your consciousness appears to reside in your skull. Even so, you should not take unnecessary chances.”

She snipped the thread and patted him on the thigh just before the bell for the next round started.

Dan was moving more stiffly now, but he had an advantage of two limbs over his opponent, and Iron Slugger seemed to be holding his remaining left arm very carefully.

He feinted to the right, let Iron Slugger block it, and followed up with a headbutt.

He had expected to stun him. He hadn’t expected his opponent’s head to come clean off. It sailed through the air and by sheer dumb luck landed at Palethorn’s feet.

Iron Slugger ground to a halt and its master was already rising to his feet yelling, “Curse you! Curse you all! You think you’ve won?”

Dan nodded.

Palethorn shook his staff at him. “I’ll have my day and when I do, I’ll… I’ll…” He grumbled something unintelligible as he stalked out, kicking the disembodied metal head as he went.


	9. Unexpected Guests

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter and the next one owe a lot to @drowsy-nelapsi's fic Nocturne which you should all go to their tumblr to read. Knell and Marion belong to @dongtopus and I love them.  
> My apologies to both of them.

“Well, we won that round quite literally, didn’t we?” the professor said cheerfully, once they were back in the comparative safety of the lab. He dropped something wrapped in oilskin on his desk. “Now, Fortesque, while you were fighting I took the opportunity to do a little work on your sword. See what you think.”

Dan picked up the parcel in familiar bony fingers and unwrapped it. He swung the sword a couple of times and grinned, as much as a skull was able. It was perfectly weighted, plain yet sharp, and even he could feel the enchantment winding around the blade.

He looked up as Kift continued. “We’re not out of the woods yet. In fact, at this very moment I’m picking up two areas of extreme psychic disturbance. One is in Whitechapel. The other, Wulfrum Hall… it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.” He waved a readout from one of his more esoteric machines.

“May I see that?” Raziel asked. He took the paper and his brow creased in a frown.

The professor peered over his shoulder. “All I could get from it was a great, malevolent, slumbering evil.”

Dan had known Raziel face sorcerers and demons and ungodly creatures, but there was cold dread in his voice as he said softly “Vampires.”

“I’m going with him,” he said quickly.

“No, Fortesque, I need you to go to Whitechapel.”

“Daniel, I can cope on my own, I promise.”

“I know you think you can, but-”

“Let me go,” Kiya cut in.

“No!” all three men chorused.

“It’s too dangerous!” Dan said.

“You don’t have a weapon,” Raziel protested.

“Well, if she’s careful, and comes back at the first sign of trouble,” the professor began.

“Wait, Daniel, Raziel, you freed me from my tomb. Do not imprison me in another.” Kiya spoke steadily, looking them in the eye. “I wish to see the world, to help in the fight, and I will be careful.”

Dan started shaking his head, but Raziel elbowed him in the ribs. Her words had hit him like a punch in the stomach. He couldn’t be complicit in taking away her freedom, not after the Elder God, not after the Reaver. He relented.

“At least let us stop by the museum and get you some weaponry.”

“Right,” Kift clapped his hands together. “Kiya, you take Winston and go to Whitechapel. Raziel, Dan, check out the other disturbance.”

Kiya linked arms with the two men and walked cheerfully out of the lab.

*

After a brief education in swordplay, Kiya had left with a katana, a couple of daggers, and an air of bloody mindedness that Raziel recognised only too well.

“So, vampires,” Dan said as their footsteps echoed around the empty streets.

“Yes.”

“Family?”

“I doubt it.”

“Friends?”

“No.”

And that was that. They walked on for a while in silence, moving into the suburbs of the city.

“Daniel?”

“Yes?”

“Please don’t harm them unless you have to.”

“I promise.” He squeezed Raziel’s shoulder. “Are you sure you’re going to be alright?”

“I have to be. If there is any chance that Kain still lives, they may know of him. And if not, I have a duty to those we left behind. Saviour or Scion, we are needed.”

The wraith’s shoulders slumped under the weight of duty. He seemed smaller, older, impossibly weary. For the first time in a long while Daniel could see clearly the visage of one who had lived and lost for millennia. Any words of comfort would have sounded laughably naive. He stayed silent.

The dark stone bulk of Wulfrum Hall rose before them, overshadowing dark thoughts. Dan hopped up the front steps and rapped on the heavy oak door. A hatch opened and a heavily stitched face appeared just long enough to rasp “Go away,” and slam it back in their faces.

“What,” Dan said, “the hell?”

He turned to Raziel whose eyes were alive with hope.

“Melchiahim always were fond of self-improvement.” The wraith knocked again and got as far as “I, Lord Raziel demand-” before the hatch got slammed shut once more.

“Rude,” he muttered.

Dan, who had been poking around the rest of the façade, beckoned him over to a small half open window.

“A good idea, but not even I am that skinny.”

“I know that we won’t fit in, but those might.” He pointed towards a couple of green disembodied hands scampering about the grounds.

“You intend to do what, exactly? Train them to open the door for us?”

“No, I want you to pick me up if this goes wrong.”

Dan picked up one of the hands, took off his skull, and placed it on the wrist. Raziel watched, not quite believing what he was seeing as the green skull-topped hand scuttled uncertainly across the grass.

“This is the fourth strangest thing I have ever witnessed,” he said to himself as he picked up the Dan-hand and placed him on the windowsill.

“Wish me luck,” Dan said and hopped into the kitchen below.

It was hard to tell from six inches above the ground, but the larder looked completely unused, unless the inhabitants were in the habit of eating spiders. The kitchen proper was… interesting. Yes, interesting. It smelled like a charnel house and looked like a butcher’s shop. Dan was glad he couldn’t see much of the work surfaces, given the unpleasantness of the parts he could see.

There was the sound of clawed footsteps on stone and some sotto voce grumbling, and he hurried underneath a table. Feet passed by and paused next to him for a moment. Dan panicked for a fraction of a second before there was a rattle of metal on wood as something was deposited on the table top. The unseen complainant muttered something about bloody door to door salesmen and left the room.

That meant that the keys had probably been put on the table. Dan really didn’t want to see what else was up there but he didn’t have much choice. He ran out from under the table, hopped onto a conveniently placed box, into an open drawer, and then onto the table.

Dan picked his way between trays of pinkish tubes and red oozy things he didn’t want to look at, let alone touch. He struggled to pick up the large iron key, fumbling and trying to figure out how to move anywhere whilst holding onto the damn thing.

If he hadn’t have been so distracted he might have noticed the being in the doorway before it saw him. Stepping across the threshold, it unfolded itself to its full height and all four of its eyes narrowed.

When it opened its mouth it was a shock to hear human speech, let alone the dulcet tones of a gentleman, albeit at high volume. “Knell! One of your damned experiments has escaped again!”

Dan jammed the key between the back of his hand and his teeth, and was running across the floor before the shout had died away.

The gentleman monster gave chase and Dan scuttled beneath the dresser. He backed against the skirting board as a long clawed hand reached under and started patting about the floor. In the clarity that comes with mortal terror he noticed the lace cuff trailing in the dried blood and dust on the unswept tiles.

“Marion what are you doing? You’ll have the dresser over.” Another voice, dry and rougher than the first.

The arm retreated slightly as the man – Marion – looked up. “Trying to catch your little green pet.”

“ _What_ little green pet?”

“This one.” Marion triumphantly flourished a very normal looking arm, then stared at it.

Dan didn’t wait to hear any more. He was out from under the dresser and running through the door before he heard the response, something about not knowing the difference between a project and a pincushion. As long as neither of them was chasing him it wasn’t any of his concern. What was his concern was the flight of stairs before him, something of an obstacle to someone currently ten inches high.

He scrambled up, jumping and scrabbling for purchase on the threadbare carpet. By the time he got to the top, he wasn’t in much of a position to appreciate the rich decor above stairs, all red drapery and dark wood. He kept close to the walls as he scurried through the halls, fearful of finding more outlandish denizens of this place.

Aside from the creaking of distant floorboards and occasional raised voices drifting up from the cellars, he reached the entrance hall without seeing any signs of life. The large oak door rose before him with the keyhole far beyond his reach. Getting out was going to be more difficult than he had thought.

For want of a better plan he went through the nearest open door and into a study. Bookcases lined the walls and a very climbable looking desk sat beneath a thankfully open window. Dan started towards it, not noticing the little girl until it was too late.

“Skelly!” she shrieked cheerfully and grabbed hold of him.

Small fingers dug into him, far stronger than a human child. This was not part of the plan. Neither was getting cuddled to within an inch of his life, nor getting thrown and caught like a ragdoll.

The girl giggled as he flew through the air screaming. He hit a bookcase with a pained grunt and lay on the shelf for a few seconds trying to get the world to stop spinning.

A piercing scream cut through the air and he dragged himself upright. The girl was staring tearfully up at him far out of her reach.

Dan ran along the shelf and made a leap out the window. The relief lasted right up until he hit the ground. His skull smacked on the stone and the world suddenly seemed far away.

He was vaguely aware of Raziel leaning over him, picking him up. He whimpered as Raziel’s claws met the point of impact and gently turned his skull over. Words like ‘hairline fractures’ and ‘be careful’ filtered through his consciousness as the world swam into and out of focus.

By the time his skull was placed back on his spinal column, Dan’s mind had oscillated back to somewhere in the region of reality, but attempting to operate an entire skeleton was still beyond him.

“Oof.” Razel staggered when Daniel collapsed against him and grabbed at a stone column to stop them both from going over. “You are in no condition to face vampires.”

“’M good,” Dan mumbled, standing upright on his second try.

“You are not ‘good’. You have seldom been less good in all the time I have known you. In fact, the only time I have known you be worse was when you tried to break up that fight between Bloodmonath and Imanzi, and she-”

Dan waved him into silence. “See? I’ve been worse. You’re not going in there alone.”

“ _You_ are not going in there at all.”

“You’re not putting yourself at risk for my sake.”

“Daniel, if I avoided everything which has traumatic memories attached to it I would never leave my own bed.”

“Raziel…”

Raziel still didn’t know how Daniel could emote without a face, but it still made him relent. “Very well, but be careful. Follow my lead.”

He unlocked the door and stepped into the foyer only to be stopped by a pair of broadswords blocking his way.

“Now then gents, we can’t just let you walk in here,” one of the animated suits of armour said amiably.

“There’s all sorts of riff raff on the streets these days,” his companion nodded. “We’ll need some identification if it’s all the same to you.”

“Identification?” Raziel drew him up to his full, inconsiderable height. “I am Lord Raziel, first born lieutenant of Kain himself!”

“You’re not Zaezel. For a start, he’s taller than you. And he’s got more skin.”

“The Count won’t like you impersonating his partner.”

“Not Zaezel, _Raziel_ ,” he tried to explain before another suit of armour joined in.

“Too right he won’t. Now push off before we decide to take you to him to explain yourself.”

Raziel was getting tired of this treatment. There may have been six of the guards, they may have all been over a foot taller than him, but his pride was at stake. He reached for the Soul Reaver.

Dan’s hand closed over his. He shook his head. “We’re here to visit Marion. Are we too early?”

“Why didn’t you say? If anyone’s awake at this time it’ll be him. Knell’s keeping him up all hours on their work for the Count. He’ll be in the basement.” The knight pointed. “Down there to the main staircase and there’s a door on the left.”

“Thank you.” Dan hurried Raziel out of the room before he could start a fight.

“Who is Marion?” he hissed, once they were in the corridor.

“I heard his name mentioned when I borrowed the key,” Dan whispered back. “And I wouldn’t go back into that basement for all the gold in Gallowmere.”

“What worries me is his ‘work for the Count’, an ominous sentence if ever I heard one.”

Dan thought back to the myriad body parts lying about the kitchen. “I think I might have an idea-” He cut himself off with a manly shriek of terror and leapt behind Raziel.

There was a cry of “Skelly!” and a small child threw herself towards him.

Raziel scooped her up as she came running towards them. “Now then, young one, who would you happen to be?”

She focused on this new point of interest and gave him a pointy toothed grin. “’ilet,” she said then entertained herself by trying to grab at the remnants of his wings.

Raziel solved this problem by holding her up at arm’s length. “What a lovely name. Are your parents around here, Violet?”

“Daddy’s downstairs,” she said as if admitting an unfortunate fact.

“Looking for you?”

Violet shrugged.

Raziel set her down. “Don’t you think you should find him?”

Violet nodded and skipped off towards the kitchen.

“I really hope she didn’t mean either of the men-” a note of uncertainty entered Dan’s voice “-I ran into down there.”

“Not half so much as I do, I assure you. To turn a child is nothing short of reprehensible. If this mysterious Count has committed such a crime then no man shall stay my sword.”

“I wouldn’t dream of stopping you,” Dan said quite sincerely. “But how are we going to find him?”

Raziel looked at the Reaver speculatively. “Oh, I am sure that I can think of something.”


	10. In The Blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter owes a lot to @drowsy-nelapsi's fic Nocturne which can be found on their tumblr (chapter one can be found here: http://drowsy-nelapsi.tumblr.com/post/167288964226/nocturne-ch-1)

Antony hadn't had a good night. He'd been dragged along to that stupid boxing match against his better instincts; been punched in the face, against all probability, by a disembodied arm; and had come home to a very unimpressed Count. All in all, he decided, it was time for an early day. He pulled the coffin lid closed and settled down to sleep.

He awoke far too early in the afternoon to a glare directed at him from about six inches away from his face. Bleary eyes took in the blue... skin? Did this thing looking at him even have skin? Everyone had skin, right? Then again, some of the things he'd seen over the last couple of nights...

A rather more insistent thought pointed out the serpentine length of the sword pointed directly at his heart. If he was more sensible or less angry it would have made him guard his tongue. As it was he just wanted this weird little gremlin gone so he could get back to sleep.

He focused back on the glowing eyes. "Wha' d'you want?" he mumbled.

"We seek the Count. Give us his location and I shall leave you unharmed."

"We?" Antony tried to sit up, caught a glimpse of that bloody skeleton, remembered the sword and lay back down hurriedly.

He gathered his thoughts and rallied, returning the ghoul's glare. "Who are you anyway, comin' in 'ere?"

"My name is Raziel. Look well upon the sword I wield and decide if you wish to cross me."

It was far too early for a history test, but the name dredged something up from old memories. Sire and traitor, carrying a sword which stole souls. If this nightmare from the old country sought the Count, who was Anthony to deny him?

"Go down the hall on your left, up to the third floor, there's a big carving over the door, you can't miss it. Now sod off and let me sleep."

Raziel slammed the lid down hard enough to make his ears ring. A quiet "ow" drifted out of the coffin.

"Well, he was rude," the wraith said and stalked away.

Dan practically skipped every other step to keep up. "Razzie, what's wrong? You're tense as a bowstring."

"They smell familiar. Too much so. Did you see his arms?"

"Looked almost like little wings. Why?"

"My mind is trying to fool me, Daniel. Out of guilt I believe." He shook his head. "Even after all these centuries a part of me wishes to believe in the impossible."

That wasn't an answer, but Dan knew it was the only one he was going to get. He could see Raziel's hand shaking as he pulled open the last door on the hallway. It was another bedroom, the window shuttered and boarded to keep fledglings from the light.

Raziel wrenched open the lid of the nearest coffin and paused. The fledgling blinking it the light couldn't have lived more than a year in the blood.

"Do you know the way to the Count's chamber?" he asked softly.

"Hmm? Door op'site."

"Thank you."

Red eyes slid closed again and he shut the lid quietly as he had done with his own brood countless times a world away and several lifetimes ago.

"Razzie?"

Raziel focused on the present again. "Yes, of course."

The stairs creaked and groaned during their ascent, making all thoughts of stealth vanish. Whatever was beyond the arched doorway would surely know of their approach.

"Do we have a plan?" Dan whispered.

"No. Considering our track record I cannot consider this to be unfortunate. I would advise you to draw your sword, but I cannot tell you how effective it will be if it does come down to fighting. Vampires' wounds are fleeting; anything less than a mortal blow will heal in moments." He felt sick to think of it, but it had to be said. "Water and fire are equally devastating to our kind. If it should prove necessary..."

"It won't."

Before Raziel could argue Dan strode into the room with a confidence he wished he felt. When his eye adjusted to the gloom he took in the low mezzanine running around the room, crowded with statues and ornaments. Down the few steps into the main space and it was almost empty save for a mirror at each wall and a great painted sarcophagus looming over the scene.

As he looked up at it his bravery drained away, thoughts of acting the knight gallant ran and hid at the back of his psyche, until when he tried to speak and managed a strangled "erm, hello?

The coffin swung open ponderously and the last of Dan's bravery fled. Daniel himself, on sight of a gleaming red face and monstrous gaping maw, yelped and hid behind Raziel.  
The figure stepped into the candlelight and Dan, peering over Raziel's head, realised that what he had taken to be a creature was in fact stylised dress armour. The man wearing it was tall, slender, broad shouldered, and unimpressed.

He yawned and spoke in a rich Ustenheim accent that made Raziel's chest ache. "What manner of creatures are you to disturb the Count's sleep? Why, before me I see nothing more than a couple of re-animated bags of bones. You have done well to reach me, but the Count has walked this earth for a thousand years-"

"A thousand years?" Raziel interrupted the monologue. "Is that all it took for our people's memory to be wiped from the world?"

The Count's expression was unreadable beneath his helmet, but the shock was plain in his voice. "Raziel? But they killed you."

"Indeed." He drew himself up. "Do you wish to make another attempt?"

"I have no desire to harm you, but do not believe I shall not do so if required. We have survived well enough without you, Raziel. Why, free from the fates of Nosgoth, we have thrived!"

"Is this what you call thriving? Allying yourself with a human necromancer? Turning children to our blood? And to think I thought that the corpse raising Melchiahim had been brought low!"

"Actually, Violet is," the Count began, then shook his head. "That is no concern of yours. I raised this clan from the ashes when you left us. It is mine by right."

"And now you would see our name disgraced by allying with Palethorn? I shall not. You have my thanks for your service to the Razielim, but for the good of the clan I must reclaim my mantle. For your own good, I beg you not to resist me."

The Count must have picked up the quaver of fear in Raziel's voice. He snorted derisively. "You were powerful once Raziel, but you know nothing of the world you find yourself in. I shall be as you once were, right hand to a great emperor and our people will thrive as they did under Kain's rule. What have you to offer us, little wraith? No more than he did, I'll be bound. Crawl back to the hole you came from, or follow Kain to the West, it is all the same to me."

"Kain was here?"

"Once, long ago, after he was brought low at Avernus. His fate is of no concern to me, no more than yours after you returned too late and too weak to raise any mantle. Now take your friend and leave before I tire of you."

"So you will not cease this foolishness? I see I am forced to beat it out of you." Raziel drew the Reaver, expecting to see some fear in the Count's at the sight of the ancient blade.

The vampire merely laughed and leapt into the air, hovering above him on crimson wings. "Following your master as always, I see. I was a fool to believe that you would choose our good over his."

"I was dead, you bastard! Do you think I wouldn't have done anything to protect them?"

Dan, who had decided early on in the vampires' conversation that wisdom lay in silence, had the presence of mind to drag Raziel out of the way of the fireball thrown from on high.

"Do we have a plan yet?" he whispered.

"I don't know if you noticed, but I've been a bit distracted," Raziel hissed back. His eyes creased. If he had the ability, the wraith would have been weeping. "They survived. They're alive, Daniel. My children. And he would keep me from them."

He leapt aside as another magical attack followed the first and retaliated with a telekinetic projectile. It barely even buffeted the Count, who laughed and threw a handful of lightning the same way. It bounced off Dan's hurriedly raised shield and dissipated onto the ceiling.

Dan watched it, and suddenly he did have a plan.

The next volley of spells flew towards them, and Daniel pulled Raziel away with him. He risked a glance backwards to find that they were almost backed against the wall. Another step back would see them tripping over a mirror's legs. Dan stepped in front of Raziel and tried to ignore his shaking legs as the Count approached.

"You are wiser than I was, my bony friend," the vampire said as he wove his spell. "I learnt long ago not to stand behind Raziel."

The wraith hung his head.

"He did his best for you!" Dan shouted. "You can't blame a man for being dead!"

"But I can blame him for the centuries after. Do you think I wanted this? Do you know what I had to do, what I had to become?" He sent the purple tinged ball of light hurtling towards them.

Time moved like treacle as Dan pushed Raziel aside and leapt after him.

The mirror's glass shattered, but it had done its job - the magic flew back at the Count, crumbling his armour like dust and bringing him to the ground. Orange hair fell across his face as crouched on the ground, fighting for breath, pulling at the tight red fabric on his upper chest.

Dan pulled himself upright and approached him warily, his sword drawn, but Raziel ran forwards heedless of any danger to himself. One of his own was in distress.

He crouched down beside him. "Mihai? It is you, is it not?" The centuries had changed his skin as blue as the Ancients', but the face of his childe was much the same.

"It is-" he coughed "-as good a name as any. Now they know me only as the Count."

"And I take it Master Knell is here because of this." His claws tapped the fabric of the binder. "How long-" his eyes widened. "Please tell me you haven't. You have not been sleeping in it."

The Count didn't meet his gaze. "The magic here is different. I did not change as you did."

"Remove that garment immediately," Raziel snapped, then, more softly, "I know your reasons intimately, you know I do, but you must not hurt yourself like this."

"I waited for ten centuries, Raziel! You will not take this from me."

"You will deny yourself the change if you continue! Surgery is more of a challenge on damaged flesh. The most skilled Melchiahim can only do so much if you insist on making it more difficult for them."

"Are those your orders as clan patron?" the Count asked bitterly.

"Merely the request of a concerned father. Ah, thank you." He took the offered shirt from Daniel - ever the gentleman - and passed it to the Count with a meaningful look.

He glared, but took the offered garment.

Dan, his back turned out of decency, tried to make sense of current events. "So he's your... son? I didn't know you had family here."

"I didn't know I had any family left at all. Mihai is... He is mine by blood, but that is not the only thing we shared. I was fortunate - with every evolution, my body became closer to my soul. He was not so fortunate, but so driven - You should have seen him in the days of empire! As for what happened after, I could not guess."

"Ah," the Count said behind him. " There I believe I can be of assistance."

*

The sun had set while they were talking. Dan hadn't the heart to break up their reunion after centuries. In the mean time, the other denizens of the house had risen and rumour was flying free.

_"Raziel is back and he has taken the throne."_

_"Raziel has killed the Count."_  
  
_"Raziel has returned and been defeated by the Count."_

_"I thought he was going to marry the Count."_

_"That's Zaezel not Raziel. The demon hasn't returned yet."_

_"There'll be bloodshed when he does."_

_"There's already been bloodshed... hasn't there?"_

The participants of the whispered conversation congregated around the entrance to the Count's chamber. The sound of conversation grew louder, and with a series of shushes, the inhabitants fell silent in time to hear "...so no more of this foolish Palethorn business."

Raziel opened the door, still talking, oblivious to the the muffled yelp as it smacked into Antony. "As for the demon, I cannot say that I approve, but you are old enough to make your own poor decisions. God knows that I can't stop you."

The Count huffed. "Hold your judgement until you know the subject. When you meet Zaezel, I assure you you will be as charmed as I."

"We shall see. I will be back as soon as this is over, and then, I promise, I shall be the sire I should have been." For the first time he appeared to notice the gathered crowd. "And I make that promise to you all."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm using a new word processor, so please let me know if you're having trouble reading it and I'll reformat it


	11. Whitechapel

 "I'm sorry we're late," Dan lied as they entered the lab. He couldn't bring himself to be sorry for seeing the rare joy in Raziel's eyes.

"Oh, you're back," Kift said. "Er, good show," he added unenthusiastically. "There's a rather unpleasant cathedral Kiya wanted you to take a look at."

"How did she fare at Whitechapel?"

The professor shifted uncomfortably. "Er, well... you see..."

* 

Kiya was halfway across the city by the time she started having second thoughts. She had spent half her short life walking the boundary between life and death without fear, but the spell had changed that. It hung like a weight over the world, smothering as the city smog. The ill fitting chainmail Dan had begged her to wear felt like no protection at all against the threats it brought.

 The sun had already fallen from its zenith and crawled blood red towards the horizon. When it set, the shadows of the mind would awaken and unfurl, and this brooding evil would grow stronger than a single woman. If she was to strike it down, it would have to be before nightfall. 

Two weights on the world, not one. She knew it in the same way she had once known breath, and the professor did not.

"Winston," she asked, still scanning the shadows, "which road leads to Whitechapel?"

"Carry on down the road, take the third right and you'll be at Whitechapel Cemetery."

"Thank you," Kiya said and started running towards the other disturbance.

She stopped in the square before the cathedral and stared. Gargoyles clung to the black stone edifice, belching flame; smoke and the smell of sulphur billowed from cracks in the earth which had once been consecrated ground. There was no doubt as to the cause of the disturbance. This place was as much of the shadow realm as the world of London.

Magic cannot be taught in the true sense, so much was based on instinct, and every one of Kiya's was screaming at her to flee that place.

"There are souls trapped here," she said distantly, looking with a sight that had nothing to do with her eyes. "Winston, you must tell the professor. No, you must tell Raziel. Whatever is in Whitechapel, I can deal with it alone - they must be freed before midnight. There is something dark and ancient at the heart of that place, and it cannot be allowed to break free. Do you understand?"

Winston clearly didn't, but he smiled as brightly as ever as he nodded, and with a "Right ho, miss," he was gone.

Kiya gave the place one last glance as she left, feeling sick to her stomach and more alone than she had ever been in her life. She walked towards the other disturbance swiftly, just slow enough to fool herself into believing that she wasn't running away.

She almost screamed when the man approached behind her. "You'd best hurry up home, miss. It's not safe for ladies to be out at night, especially not in times like these."

"Times like these?"

"The Ripper, miss, he-"

"Jenny!" A young woman in a near indecently cut dress hurried up to her and tried to pull Kiya away. "We've been looking everywhere for you." She shot a dirty glance at the policeman. "I'm sure she doesn't want the help you'd be offering."

"I'm not-" Kiya began.

"See?"

"I was only-" the policeman started.

"Never mind what you was only. Come on Jen."

Puzzled, Kiya followed.

"Sorry about that," the woman said once they were out of sight. "But the rozzers ain't any safer than other men. Less so, often. My name's Collette. If you're new to the job, Madame Jo Jo will see you right."

"Kiya. I am here to stop the growing evil in this place."

"You and half a dozen others. Most ain't seen him and they're the lucky ones. They say Jack's a gentleman, a doctor or something, but that's all I know. Save that no one's lived to say for sure, o' course."

She led the way into a discreet club with a red light above the door, into a well lit back room where a middle aged woman played upon a piano.

"Madame?"

The woman stopped and turned her painted face towards them.

"I found this girl out lookin' for the Ripper. Thought she ought to see you first."

"You was right to do so. I'll see to her, you see to the gentleman in room three."

"Yes, m'm."

Collette left with a curtsy and Kiya perched on the corner of the chaise longue.

Madame Jo Jo looked her up and down calculatingly, as if she was seeing through her old bones and into her past. "You're not a working girl whatever our Lettie says, so what are you doing throwing your life away for such as us?"

Kiya, in her borrowed armour, with a stolen sword, stopped for the first time to wonder why she was so driven. She had woken from death in a rage fuelled by terror. Her husband had taken her with him to the afterlife, as much a possession as any of his gold or jewels. She had screamed and fought as they poured poison down her throat, and that had won her oblivion.

"Because I had my life stolen," she said eventually. "Now tell me about the man who is doing the same to other women."

"I thought every soul in London knew about Jack the Ripper. But you're not a soul of London are you? I don't know what he calls himself, but that's what the papers call him. There's plenty as are interested but few enough that cares about what happens to a handful of working girls." She sighed. "Poor Mary, and the rest. I don't want to think of you ending up the same way."

"Then who? You? Collette? I faced the knife once before. I will not flee it now."

Another long, calculating look, and the madame reached a decision. "You'll not be swayed, I can see that, but you'll not catch him looking like that. He's only the Ripper when he finds his prey. Seeing him in the street, you wouldn't know until he took out his knife."

"Then how will I know him?"

"He'll need to mistake you for one of us. Stand up, lass. You look around Gina's size."

The last of the light drained from the sky as Madame Jo Jo laced her into the unfamiliar corset. Kiya knew what that meant, but she could not stand idle while the same crimes were committed over and over, century after century. The layers of skirts and petticoats made her walk clumsily, but did their job of hiding her knives and sword. She adjusted the lay of them one last time in the mirror and glanced out of the window at a starless sky.

"Two men will come looking for me presently. Please send them on to the cathedral. The soul at the centre of it must be cast out by midnight. Raziel will understand." Kiya couldn't look her in the eye. "And if I do not return, please tell them-" She shook her head. "No, that is not the way to win." 

A gloved hand raised her chin gently. "They used to tell soldiers to come back with their shield or on it. Men are such silly creatures. All I ask is that you return."

Kiya thought of her husband, thought of the priests. "I will, and he will not. That is a promise."

Madame Jo Jo nodded, a glint in her eye. "See the bastard in lavender."

Kiya walked carefully through the misty streets, hindered even by the lowest heels the ladies could spare. True night had fallen now, ancient instincts in the hindbrain enforcing the curfew better than the police ever could. Ladies of the night walked past in pairs, sometimes with a man between them. Every so often one would give her a pitying look or call for her to join them. Kiya paid then no heed.

It was in the shadow of the clock tower that she found him. He looked like any other gentleman in a top hat and suit, at least to eyes that could seen no further. Kiya tried to ignore the taint of the otherworld as she stepped forward and forced a smile, hand already reaching beneath her skirt for a knife.

He took her arm and grinned. For a moment the moon peeked out from the cloudbanks to gleam on lengthening fangs, then hid away from the sight below. Newly formed claws cut into her skin as Kiya tried to free herself. The Ripper loomed over her, twice the height of any mortal man.

A scream echoed through the empty streets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Considering I have at least one reader who doesn't know how MediEvil2 plays out, I'm letting you lot decide on the time of the next update. I don't want to leave a cliffhanger for a fortnight for anyone who doesn't know what's going to happen, but I don't want to lose my buffer chapter if no one's that bothered.
> 
> Therefore, not to sound like someone from '08 ff.net, but if across the platforms I don't get any feedback, I'll assume you're all happy to wait for two weeks. If someone does drop me a line it'll be up a week on Wednesday, or if this week's writing goes particularly well I could even be convinced to put up a new chapter by this Friday. (If anyone's interested, my tumblr's here: https://kainissoable.tumblr.com)


	12. The Ripper

"Winston went back to look for her, but we haven't had word from her since she entered the club," Kift finished.

"And she's out there alone in a strange city? Anything could have happened to her! I said it was a bad idea."

"She would not have been dissuaded, but I should have tried. Mortals are so fragile. If anything has happened to her..." Raziel shook his head.

Kift looked at his pocket watch. "I know you ought to go to the cathedral, but why don't you see if you can find her. Winston can show you where we lost contact."

*

For the second time that night, Winston tried to keep up in the desperate sprint towards Whitechapel.

"I knew we shouldn't have sent her," Dan wheezed.

"What would you have had us do? Shut her back in her tomb? I should not have burdened you with accompanying me."

"So we'd be worried sick about you instead? Sometimes there are no right answers, you know that."

"And I know it does nothing to assuage the guilt."

"She went into a club around here, but that's all I know," Winston supplied before the conversation took another turn for the worse.

Raziel watched a scantily clad woman enter with a man on her arm, and thought quickly. "Winston, you go back and aid the professor. Daniel and I can take things from here."

"Right you are, Raz." Winston nodded and vanished.

"Good thinking. We don't want the lad seeing anything he shouldn't. Now how are we going to get in? We don't exactly fit the, er, client base."

"As I recall, the demographic was anyone with money." Raziel rummaged in his cowl and produced Mander's plundered pocket change. "Let us hope that this is enough."

"Raz, this isn't going to work. We're both dead and you're naked. No one's that desperate for cash."

Nevertheless, he followed the wraith, trying to ignore the moving shapes visible in the windows behind net curtains.

They were stopped at the door by a burly, but well dressed man. "Hold it gents, we do have a dress code, you know."

"Please," Dan said, "we're looking for a lady who went in here. It's very important."

"Then it's important enough to dress properly for. No one gets in here without evening dress and a membership card."

Dan groaned. "We don't have time to go shopping!"

"Pity," the doorman said flatly.

"Excuse me, sir." Raziel reached up and tapped the man on the shoulder.

He turned around to meet a fist coming towards his face at high velocity. As he crumpled, Raziel opened the door and bowed jokingly as he held it open for Daniel.

The sussuration of low voices could be heard over the piano music, but the large foyer was empty. At the back of the space, half concealed by silk panels, they found the pianist. She turned a heavily made up face towards the intruders and subjected them to a look so calculating it put a price tag on their bones.

Dan bowed, mostly to avoid her gaze. "Excuse me, ma'am we're looking for a young lady with blue skin in armour, we were told she came in here."

"Who's doing the looking? I see my girls safe, I do," she said sharply.

"She isn't one of yours. Her name's Kiya and she could be in trouble."

"Either her or him, that's for sure. I told her what's been happening, and off she went to fight the Ripper, just like that. She told me to send you on to the cathedral, but I reckon you can find her by the monument if you ain't too late."

"Thank you."

They left the warmth of that most private of public houses, stepped over the groaning doorman and out onto the streets. Before they could start arguing about which direction to go in, a scream echoed between the buildings.

"Kiya!" Raziel grabbed Dan's arm and dragged him towards the source, down winding streets to an alleyway beside the clock tower.

The moon was too ashamed to light the scene they found there, but Raziel's eyes saw well enough. Kiya slumped, only the waistcoated beast's claws keeping her upright, her green blood spilling onto the cobbles below.

Memories of Janos and the Sarafan reawakened. The same rage he had felt then guided Raziel's hand to his sword without conscious thought, sent him charging at the man. Jack let Kiya fall and leapt over the wall. Raziel scrambled up after him, but by the time he reached the top Jack was long away across the rooftops.

"Raziel!"

He dropped back down at Daniel's voice. The knight was knelt on the cold street with Kiya cradled in his arms.

She stirred, tried to raise her head, then let it fall. "I thought I could stop him," she croaked. "Get to the... cathedral, or it will all be the same-" she coughed, a trickle of blood running down her lip "-in a few hours."

"We'll- we'll get you back to the professor," Dan said desperately. "He'll be able to help, all that tame lightning." It sounded hollow even to him.

Kiya's eyes flicked to Raziel. She was a woman of the word, and the next, and knew the facts as well as he did. "Look after him," she said.

"No. Nonononono."

Daniel tried to rouse her, but Raziel could see her spirit slipping from the world. Without thinking, he followed into the next.

The world warped and silenced Daniel's weeping. All was still in the muted plane of greys and blues, and not a single soul disturbed the silence. Wherever Kiya's soul had flown, it had no tethers to this plane. Still, he called out for her, hoping for some response in the vast, empty universe. Through the grief a single thought rose, that no matter how far Raziel ran, the spectral realm would always be waiting. Perhaps it was the same for her. Oblivion or her husband's arms? He did not need to wonder which was worse. There had to be some way to pull her back.

He ran through the spectral realm, searching for an unregarded corpse. The cemetery was close enough that he returned to Daniel in borrowed bones before he had raised his head from her corpse.

Raziel curled his arms around him, lay his head on his shoulder. "Daniel, do you remember when we first met Kift? Do you still have the chalice?"

Dan raised his head. "This... this is some secret you people know, isn't it? You're going to save her?"

Raziel couldn't bear to hear the hope in Daniel's voice. "No, no secrets. Just a chance, and a small one at that."

He put the chalice to her lips, the souls' half lives staining them purple, but carrying no life with them.

The rain pattered softly on the cobbles, the skies shedding the tears that the dead could not.


	13. Playing God

Daniel entered the lab with Kiya in his arms.

"Fortesque, there you are. Did you-" Kift stopped as claws grasped his lapels and dragged him into the full beam of Raziel's glare.

"Save her."

"What? What happened?"

Dan laid her down on the slab. "Please professor, is there anything you can do?"

Kift pulled the blood sodden fabric of her dress away from three wounds too deep for anyone to have survived.

He dabbed at his eyes beneath his glasses, shaking his head. "She's dead. She's dead, and there's nothing I can do. I should never have let her go."

"There must be something," Raziel said desperately. "Soul vessels, chronoplasts, something."

"I'm sorry, I really am, but she's gone. You have to get to the cathedral."

"Is that all you can think about you bastard?" In moments, Raziel had him by the throat, holding the helpless professor in the air.

"It's- it's what she wanted you to do," he gasped.

"Putting words in a dead woman's mouth. I should let you join her."

He drew his arm back, claws glinting in the light of the oil lamps.

"Raziel!"

Daniel took hold of his arm. "He's right. That's what she said, almost her final words. We- we have to try."

Raziel let the professor drop. He scrambled backwards until he was back behind the desk.

"Yes, well." He cleared his throat and cleaned his glasses. "We're in agreement, then?"

"No. I refuse to believe there is nothing your soul technology can do."

The professor slumped at his desk, head in his hands. "I wish there was. All these wonders, all this magic, but death is the malady that has no cure."

"You believe that? After all you've seen?"

Ignoring them, Dan lay Kiya's arms across her chest. If not for the livid green stain, she could have been sleeping.

"She said we've got until midnight," he said. "Maybe you two can... I don't know, think of something. I need to clear my head. I may be some time."

Dan walked off into the dark twisting underground tunnels, determined to get far enough away to silence the voices from the lab which had already been raised in argument. He ignored the wooden barrier half across a tunnel entrance and walked on. Neither Kift nor Raziel hard the distant scream as he fell through the rotten floor.

*

Dan awoke with a splitting headache which wasn't at all helped by the loud voice a few inches away from his face.

"The great one has awoken!"

"Wha?"

"As the prophecies foretold, he has come to rescue us in our time of need."

"Who, me?"

Bones aching and protesting, Dan pulled himself up. The change in orientation didn't do anything but send the world spinning. He squinted at the half a dozen people gathered around him. Not one of them came up higher than his elbow.

"Who're you?"

The apparent leader bowed. "Oh, great one, for centuries we Mullocks have been faithful to your name. We have kept the stories of your battles in the land of gods alive in this imperfect mortal world." Dan focused well enough to register the bones painted onto the man's clothes and the skull mask adorned with feathers. A terrible suspicion started to form. "We were happy here, far away from the world above, until the sorcerer's beast stole away seven of our people, my wife among them. Please, great god, restore them to us."

Another man grieving, but he had hope. They had been stolen, not killed, and whatever else Dan was he was a knight who had taken a vow of chivalry.

"Where were they when the attack happened?"

"In the tunnels to the east of the village. Come, the guards will show you the way."

Dan was led into a half bricked in cavern. A few houses made of robbed stone from the sewers huddled around a statue. Gallowmere had a history of depicting their dead as skeletons, and this one was no different. Dan had last seen it atop his tomb  - himself as he had always wished to be, a proud warrior of noble bearing. It was, all things considered, a pretty good likeness, and somehow it had ended up down here, below the streets of London.

He shook his head. Now wasn't the time for mysteries. The only thing to do was humour them, do what he could, and return to fulfil Kiya's dying wish. It wasn't a happy thought, but it was better than dwelling on what was in the ankle deep water of the sewer system they were walking through. A hole had been knocked through high up in one of the curved walls into a cow byre of sorts. A pair of the beasts dozing in the humid warmth opened their eyes at the newcomers' approach. Before they could startle, one of the guards hummed something halfway to song, and they lay down their heads once more.

"Twice a day, this place is cut off from the village by the tide," he said. "Three days ago, the beast came from the water and took those who tended to the animals. We heard the screams, but the water was waist high and we were too slow to give chase. My sister was amongst them."

"I'll bring them back. I promise," Dan said, hoping with all his heart that it was true. He reentered the dark, dank tunnel alone, walking ever further away from the circle of candlelight behind him.

The curve of the passageway was so gentle, he didn't even notice it until the darkness was absolute and he made his way by touch alone. The walls were covered in moss and slime that made him shudder to brush against it. His steps faltered and slowed. Any step could be over empty air, and then he would be nothing but shattered bone.

The darkness was playing tricks on him now. Daniel was sure he could see pale green lights drifting across his vision. He covered his eye and the lights vanished. Not a trick of the mind, then.

He started towards them and they grew brighter, illuminating writing tendrils and sharp toothed mouths. If the mutated plants at Kew had mated with a squid, the result would not have looked much different. Bound by vines and tentacles, half a dozen human shapes hung from the cracked brickwork. In the shifting light, it was impossible to tell if they were still breathing.

Suddenly that concern was secondary to the sets of jaws swinging towards him like lodestones turning north. He drew his sword and flailed at the nearest head, opening shallow wounds and bringing the others to attack. One snapped at his legs and he severed it with a swift downward stroke. Dan vowed to congratulate Kift on his work if he ever got out of this alive. The creature shrieked and spat a glowing globule at him, briefly illuminating the sewer tunnel. In its light he saw the captured Mullocks struggling against their bonds and the glint of hundreds of teeth converging on him.

Steeling himself, Dan lunged forwards blindly. The shriek in the dark told him he had hit home, the fragile flesh offering scant resistance to his blade. He swung his sword around in an series of arcs, the bulk of the creature making every strike successful, but none fatal.

His sword hit the wall with a clang. Dan swore, almost dropping it. Another brief ball of light illuminated what might have been a ring of eyes around a mouth large enough to swallow him whole.

He screamed. His sword swung up on automatic and lodged in the beast's head. Ichor splattered across the darkened tunnel, drenching him in its lifeblood.

There was silence and stillness for the space of a few speeding heartbeats, and then a hesitant voice from the darkness. "Is... is it dead."

Dan kicked something soft and spongy lying in the water. "Yes."

He felt along the wall until he found the tendrils still wrapped around the Mullocks and pulled. They snapped like ancient thread.

"I'm going to get you home... er," Dan paused and looked around as if he could discern anything in the blackness. "Do you know which way that is?"

Their return to the village was not quite the heroic return Dan had imagined. Tired and hungry, the freed Mullocks shuffled and stumbled towards the mage lights of the cavern. Almost immediately, they were surrounded by the villagers and hurried away, leaving Dan alone before the king.

He bowed and gestured Dan to follow him. "Come, great one, to witness the ceremony and receive your reward."

Dan followed him hesitantly into one of the stone houses. He didn't want to waste any more time, but these people were his only hope of finding his way back to the surface.

The room was dominated by a carving of his skull, slightly more than the height of a man. Around it were various artefacts from Gallowmere. He recognised tapestries that had once hung in Castle Peregrine, shadow demon claws and hides, ragged standards from the war six centuries past. In that room, only one thing was unknown to him, and that very fact made it leap out amongst the others.

"What's this?" he asked, pointing to a poster that couldn't have been more than a couple of years old.

"We have nothing of the time device," the king explained. "You destroyed it most thoroughly. This likeness of a failed experiment is the closest we could get. Pray join the circle for the ceremony."

Two guards carried in a box between them and laid it reverently in the centre of the room, then backed away until they were part of the ring of watching Mullocks. The king stepped forward and opened the case, revealing a faceted gem the size of a human head. As he held it up to the light, colours shifted in it like the sea, one moment an iridescent turquoise, then the colour of a cloudy sea, shimmering into the blue of scattered memories.

"Come, lost ones," he said, and the rescued Mullocks left the circle to stand around the king. "Join with the Timestone, and we become a whole tribe once more."

Each of them placed a hand on the stone's shimmering surface and was outlined for the briefest moment in a pale blue glow. In the space of seconds the stone was locked away once more, taking the magic with it, but leaving a glimmer in Daniel's soul.

The king turned to him. "Great one, we are in your debt. Please accept from us this tribute." The two guards reentered, this time carrying a golden shield between them. They lay it at his feet, bowed, and backed away hurriedly.

Dan picked it up and inclined his head. "Thank you. Before I leave, can I ask one more thing of you?"


	14. Out of Time

A sullen silence pervaded the lab. Raziel was sitting on the floor staring at a stuffed rabbit as if it were somehow all its fault. The professor was nowhere to be seen.

Dan squelched towards him at high speed. "Razzie!"

"Daniel, what happened to you?"

"I fell through a hole, and ended up in the sewers, but there were these creatures... they, they worshipped me. I had to rescue some of their people and-"

"You fell and hit your head."

"No! Okay, yes, but listen-"

"No, you listen," Raziel growled. "Kiya is dead. The cathedral is all but tearing itself from this world already, and it would be suicide to enter. We've lost, Daniel, do you understand?"

"No, we haven't, listen. The Mollucks had this thing they called a Timestone, and this." He produced the slightly stained poster from his breastplate.

Raziel glared at it as if it had personally offended him. His eyes widened. "Daniel! Do you know what this means?"

"I hope so."

Raziel scrambled upright and practically towed Dan through a side door into the professor's bedroom. Kift barely had time to raise his tear streaked face from the pillow before Raziel was pulling him up roughly.

"You knew about this, you bastard!"

Kift tried to focus on the piece of paper thrust under his nose. The brightly coloured words, "Kift's Amazing Confabulating Chrono-chair" leapt out at him, almost as accusing as the wraith's gaze. He looked down.

"Alright, alright, I built it years ago. Doesn't work, though, complete waste of time. I only ever could get it to travel through space."

"What else haven't you told us? What were you hiding?"

The professor looked beyond Raziel to the suddenly imposing figure of Daniel. There wasn't any way of getting out of this. He removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"Alright, I've been economical with the truth. I suspected it was Palethorn from the start- alright, alright, I knew," he admitted when even Dan growled at him. "We were friends once, before the expedition of '78. That was when I learnt what the other fellows knew all along... I suppose it won't do any harm to tell you now. We were in the Magic Circle together, years ago now, until they expelled him. A month later he turned up at my door, claiming he had found the last resting place of Zarok's spell book. Fool that I was, I went with him. We found the tomb, despite the storm and the sea itself trying to stop us. Now I wonder if there was some sort of curse on the place trying to keep us away, but at the time I had thoughts of nothing but finding the book."

"And did you?" Raziel interrupted.

"Oh, we found it alright, in an underground labyrinth hidden by a tomb. But when Palethorn placed his hands upon it, the room began to collapse. The last thing I truly remember is him pushing me aside as a great stone fell from the ceiling. My hands were crushed beyond repair, and to this day I don't know how I escaped that place, only that eventually I was found by some fishermen, inches from death."

Kift removed one of his gloves, revealing gleaming metal beneath. "I built myself new hands, studied all I could of dark magic, and I waited. For a decade, I waited for my revenge, and now..." He sighed and shook his head. "Now we're doomed, because I was too much of a fool and a coward to do anything before."

It was Raziel who broke the silence. "I have lived half my life after the death of hope, and one thing I have learned is that there is always time for another final battle. Daniel believes that there is a way, and I believe Daniel. But whether we are successful or not it is in the nature of these things that we shall not return."

*

The walk back to the museum was short but treacherous. The starless sky was black as sin, save for where it was lit up blood red by the distant glow of the cathedral. Demons flitted from rooftop to rooftop, occasionally with a screaming victim in their claws.

Daniel raised his pistol at one, but Raziel stopped him.

"Save your ammunition. This place is beyond redemption."

"But I can-"

"You can do more with patience. Come."

The museum foyer was a small haven of peace in a world rapidly going to hell. The gas lamps overpowered the sickly red hue let in by the windows, and the signs to the science exhibition retained their brightness and cheer for all the darkness in the outside world. Daniel half ran into the room, scanned the signs - Music, Technology, Space, Time - "Ah!"

He ran towards the time machine, then stared at the multitude of levers and switched in mute incomprehension.

Seconds later Raziel joined him. He tried turning a numbered dial to -4h and was rewarded by a horrible grating noise. He froze, let go of the dial slowly, and stepped away from the machine.

Dan, who had been flicking through the accompanying booklet uttered a quiet, "Oh."

"Oh?" Raziel echoed with a sinking feeling, surprised in an abstract way that he could always find a deeper rock bottom.

"They removed the power source when it got installed in the museum. Didn't want kids taking joy rides, I suppose." He slumped down onto the seat and stared blankly at the complicated brasswork in front of him. No hope for the future, no hope for the past.

Dan looked up. "What?"

"I said, what does it run on?"

Dan shrugged. "I guess it was meant to go here." He pointed to a hemispherical indent at the front of the machine.

Raziel stared at it for slightly longer than was comfortable and looked around at the Space exhibit. On the back wall was a gateway he recognised all too well. He didn't need the plaque declaring it to be a warp gate, one that once stood in an ancient temple. The last testament to Nosgoth's false god had, it seemed, been broken down and scattered across this new empire. The humans had apparently been puzzled when it stopped working after being torn from its native soil, and instead of returning what had been stolen had bundled it away in the back of this church to history.

The last survivor of that lost age took the gate's shimmering orb in his claws and placed it onto the time machine. He gently nudged Dan to one side and sat down next to him. "It will travel in space, at least. I cannot guarantee anything beyond that."

"Hmm... Do you know how to steer this thing?"

Raziel stared at the array of cogs and dials, dredging his memory for details of his ill fated trips through time at the hands of Moebius.

"No," he admitted.

"Erm, let's see, I went down, can't have been less than forty feet..." Dan muttered at he turned knobs and pulled levers seemingly at random.

With a sound like a tortured clock finally breaking in a shower of springs, the time machine took off. Raziel closed his eyes against the dizzying sense of displacement. He was unsurprised when Dan's hand sought out his and gripped it tightly. He squeezed back silently, unwilling to speak lest Daniel hear a note of panic in his voice. The world blurred, became thin and hazy, and slowly faded into darkness.


	15. False Gods

It was cold and dark when the time machine stopped shaking and some of the nausea receded. Dan looked around at the dripping, curved brick walls.

"Close enough."

He led Raziel through twisting tunnels, guided by the occasional lantern and the sound of distant voices.

"You spoke the truth," Raziel said almost disbelievingly when he saw the tiny village with the statue at the centre. Already a group of Mullocks had gathered around them and fallen to their knees.

The King joined them, flanked by a pair of guards. He bowed briefly.

"My Lord, we thought you had left us for the land of gods once more, yet you bring your highest angel with you. Pray, what can we do to aid you?"

"We need to borrow another artefact of yours. Er, if that's okay?"

"Of course, Great One, consider anything but the Timestone to be yours."

Dan rubbed his wrist uncomfortably. "Er, right, thanks."

"We shall require all mortals to leave the room," Raziel said quickly. "Some things are not suited for your eyes."

"I understand," the King said, shooing his attendants out the door and bowing out after them.

"Good thinking, Razzie," Dan whispered.

"I was right hand to a living god once before. Now, the Timestone?"

Dan pointed to a pedestal on which stood a small wooden box. Raziel approached warily and opened it with a flick of a claw. The Timestone bathed the room in a pale blue light, shimmering almost hypnotically, drawing the watchers closer.

A cage dropped down over them with a clang. The repurposed sewer gratings locked into hooks buried in the floor and guards sprouted from the shadows.

"False gods! The king will decide what to do with you."

"Now wait a minute!"

"We're trying to save the world here."

The remaining guards said nothing, but shifted their grip on their spears.

Dan flopped to the floor in despair. "That's it then. Of all the ways this could have ended, sacrificed by sewer dwellers who worship me. Raz? What are you doing?"

"I think these bars are insubstantial enough. Be ready." He let the physical realm fade and stepped through the bars as the world turned icy blue. Daniel and the Mollucks froze in time.

He left them to search the village. Where would the Mollucks bury their dead? He ran through flooded pipes without pausing, clambered through forgotten rooms. Finally a corpse light drew him to a pile of bones tangled in twine and the detritus of the sewer.

Raziel splashed back through the tunnels to the village until his way was blocked by spears.

"Will you return to face judgement freely," one of the guards asked, "or must we drag you back ourselves?"

His mouth didn't have time to close before Raziel kicked out at him, snatched his partner's spear, and was running through the village before he hit the ground.

The wraith kept to the shadows as much as possible. There weren't many people to see in any case, but the guards looked more watchful than he had come to expect. The one outside the artefact chamber was the only one that concerned him, but posed a considerable problem. Daniel would complain if he killed him, but any noise would alert others.

He drew the Reaver silently and crept closer. One blow from the pommel and the guard collapsed unconscious.

Dan was alone in the room, sitting in the cage where he had left him. A chain led up from the top of the cage into the ceiling. Raziel scaled it like a spider. Fighting against the heavy crankshaft, he would in the chain and raised the cage.

"Now what?" Dan asked once he had dropped back down to the ground.

"Now we run."

It should have been a clear run back to the time machine. It would have been if either of them had much of a sense of direction.

"You said you knew the way!"

"So did you!"

"This was."

"No, this way."

"I'm sure it was here," Dan said, stopping at a wider section of tunnel.

"Then where is it now? Do you think someone was passing by along a damned sewer pipe and walked off with it? No one bur the Mullocks could have been down here." Raziel paused. "No, they couldn't have. Surely they didn't. Damn!"

"The water's rising."

"So?"

"So they could have used a boat. I think I remember where the Mullocks kept them."

"Is that likely?"

"Do you have a better idea?"

"Fine."

They found the time machine lashed to a rickety barge in the middle of a deep pool.

"You give that back!" Dan shouted at the villager sitting on the raft.

They shook their head and gripped their spear tighter.

"No? I'm your god!"

"You are not my king. Away with you or I will cast your device into the water."

"Very bloody helpful," he muttered.

Raziel looked thoughtful. "The king. I have a plan."

"Does it involve regicide?"

"Well..."

"Raziel, no!"

"Very well. The alternative merely requires some more work."

They crept back to the village without much difficulty. It was becoming clear that the Mullocks had never had to deal with anything more dangerous than an escaped duck.

Raziel pulled Daniel into the shadow of a doorway as two pairs of footsteps neared them.

"I don't understand it, sire," the guard said. "One moment he was in the cage and the next he was gone."

"This is worrying indeed. Come inside to tell me the rest. It isn't safe out in the open."

When the guard followed him into the house, the two watchers ducked in after. Dan pulled the door closed with a click and the Mullocks looked up.

"There are two ways this can go," Raziel said calmly, "but one would cause Daniel unnecessary upset. Lay down your spear, please."

The guard stepped forward, but was stopped by a hand on his shoulder.

"Do as he says. What king would I be if I led you to your death?" He stood before them like a sacrifice of the empire, hands clasped behind him. "What must I do for you to leave my people unharmed."

"We're not going to hurt anyone," Dan said, shooting Raziel a warning glance.

The king raised a hand suddenly, the yellow glow barely registering before Raziel, propelled by instinct, rammed into him with bone breaking force. In moments, the king's hands were pinned and Raziel's claws were at his throat. The guard froze halfway to raising his spear.

"That's enough," Daniel said to the frozen tableau. "Now drop the spear and remove your belt."

Once they were gagged and bound, the rest of the plan should have been simple, but Dan had other ideas.

"This isn't going to work. I'm too tall."

"Be quiet and put on the costume," Raziel snapped as he struggled into poorly fitting ceremonial armour.

"I can't get changed in front of them!"

"You have nothing to hide but bone."

"It's the principle of the thing."

"Go into the other room, then. And remember to put your armour in the bag."

Defeated, Dan retreated into the second chamber to change. Trying to take his mind off dressing up as himself, he looked around the small room. A green glow caught his eye. He recognised it from a life- no, a death's time ago. The good lightning that had brought back warriors from the brink of death, knitting skin to flesh and soul to bones.

He threw it into the bag and left hurriedly.

Raziel looked up at Dan wearing a mask of his own skull and back down to himself in too small armour that left vast swathes of unnaturally blue flesh uncovered. "If this works it will be a miracle."

Dan paused at the door and looked back. "We'll return everything, I promise. I'm sorry about this."

"Come on, Daniel."

He followed.

Back at the water's edge Dan called out again. "You can come back to shore. We've got the Timestone back."

They looked back at him silently for a few seconds, then started sculling back to shore.

The Mullock watched silently as they boarded the raft and fitted the stone into place. This time the hour dial turned easily with the fluid clicking of well kept clockwork.

"Whitechapel, Whitechapel, Whitechapel," Dan muttered as he pulled the levers, occasionally causing Raziel to wince when metal grated against metal with an agonised sound.

"Does that look right to you?"

"I am not a good person to direct that question towards."

"Oh, well, what's the worst that could happen?"

Raziel closed his eyes and rummaged through his memory. "Let's see... We could unwittingly kill everyone we hold dear, condemn ourselves to timeless purgatory, and destroy the very fabric of reality."

"Oh." A worried look crossed what was left of Dan's face before the time machine took off once more.


	16. Cheating Fate

Another man, another knife, another time, swam into Kiya's mind. Three thousand years ago, yet less than three days to her. He was saying something, but she couldn't hear over the cacophony of terror. Her mind was full of the priests' hands on her, subduing her, pinning her down when her husband hadn't lived long enough to do so.

Half blinded by tears, rage and terror flooded through her, threatening to freeze her where she stood.

She kicked back once, sharply.

He grunted and his grip loosened for a second. Long enough for her to twist away.

Too much fabric. Her katana was tangled in her skirts and she dared not look down to free it, not when he was moving closer by the second. She gripped her knife, lips forming the first words of an ancient prayer before falling still. It had done her no good in centuries passed. There was no help from gods, nor magic, nor men. Nothing but her and a single dagger.

A shout from across the street caught his attention for a fraction of a second. It was the only chance she would get. Kiya lunged, aiming up through the ribcage for the heart.

She was thrown aside as he turned. Two figures raced towards them, and in a forgotten corner of her plundered tomb, Kiya's heart filled with hope.

"You stay away from her!"

"Kiya, get behind me."

Daniel helped he scramble to her feet while Raziel stood before the Ripper, sword drawn.

Jack grinned a grin with far too many teeth in it. "If you want to join this filthy, sinful girl in death then so be it."

He sped towards them faster than mortal eyes could follow, claws little more than a sliver blur. Raziel collapsed to the ground, clutching his ribs. Dan barely had time to raise his shield before Jack slammed into him and was at the other end of the alley before the knight could regain his balance.

Jack laughed and charged at them again. Too fast for a mortal to counter, but not so for a wraith. He met the sword in the middle of its arc, running too fast to dodge it.

He cursed and pressed a bloodstained hand to his belly.

"You'll pay for this, girl!"

Kiya expected his injury to slow him, but her knife passed through nothing but air as he lifted her from the ground and snarled. Claws sank into her flesh, stinging with the poison of dark magic. She could taste it along with her own blood in the moments before he dropped her.

"Like for like," she gasped, then, louder, "He will steal the life from your body if you let him."

"Only yours," Jack called back to her. "To repay all you took from honest men-"

He broke off with a gasp of pain and turned to Daniel who was readying his pistol for a second shot. He darted to Kiya, but found Raziel in his path, too late to avoid him.

Still reeling from the sword blow, anther bullet sent him to the ground. Jack gathered his failing strength into one dark spell and sent an arc of black lightning towards Kiya. She raised a hand, a half formed, silvery barrier in her palm, before the darkness hid her and she screamed.

A third pistol shot halted the assault and Kiya fell like a rag doll and lay unmoving on the cobbles.

Two men stood over him with murder in their eyes, and Jack knew he had lost, but still begged for his worthless life to be spared. He clutched at their ankles and sobbed, tripping over his tongue, and eventually ending in a pitiful, "Please..."

Dan kicked his hand away.

"No," Raziel said simply and raised his sword.

Before he could strike the killing blow, the Ripper slumped.

Kiya reclaimed her knife from the corpse, wiping off the blood and traces of the magic that had propelled it on her ruined dress. She smiled at them wanly and collapsed into Daniel's arms.

He looked to Raziel, whose flesh was already being knitted back together by the Ripper's soul. "Get the bag from the time machine."

The wraith didn't wait for an explanation. He grabbed the bag of useless armour and painted bones and barely stopped himself from throwing it into Dan's arms.

"Good lightning, hurry."

He rummaged in the bag, unstoppered the bottle, and sent his life force to Kiya's failing flesh and soul. Raziel watched through the haze of spell-wrought exhaustion as her wounds mended and her breathing became less laboured. She lay a hand on his arm.

"Enough," Kiya said softly. "You will need your strength. The cathedral-" She looked up at the sound of running feet, and recognised the men who came around the corner.

Raziel and Daniel stopped and stared at the scene, Kiya lying bloodied in their own arms, but still breathing. Dan stepped towards them as though hypnotised, Raziel's restraining hand falling from his shoulder.

From his place on the cobbles, Raziel reached out, trying to stop Daniel from rising to greet his double. He recognised the sense of displacement as the very fabric of reality warped under the weight of paradox.

"No," he whispered, "Not now. We won."

He heard his own voice across the street, "Daniel Fortesque, I am begging you to stop."

Too late. Each Daniel reached out to touch his mirror image. A light like a star being born filled the alley, obscuring the figures and forcing the watchers to turn their heads away. The universe was realigning itself, shuffling through a hundred thousand possibilities to find a new present which could accommodate the change. The edge of Kain's coin, a desperate gamble which could end in annihilation. He could sense the twin souls merging, and when the light receded only one man stood before them.

Raziel was the first to break the silence. "Daniel, that was incredibly foolish. do you have any idea what could have happened?"

Dan didn't answer. He picked at his vambrace distractedly.

"Good armour, this," he mumbled.

"That has nothing to do with- Good God what happened to it?"

"Looks like Dirk's shield, doesn't it? It's not real gold, of course. He said he forged it in a flame of concentrated magic so it wasn't quite of this world."

"Of this world and another," Raziel said. "The energy from the paradox had to go somewhere. Thank God it earthed itself somewhere safe." He closed his eyes against another wave of nausea and displacement.

Raziel sat down next to him before he fell.

"We both know how this goes. There is only one way reality can fully heal."

He held out a hand and the wraith took it. Again the world half shattered and coalesced around the twining souls in a flash of light.

Raziel blinked as two sets of memories settled into his mind. He looked to Kiya. He had seen her die, but the ghost of his grief was fading.

A ghostly light in the corner of his eye made him look down to the Reaver, the sword of prophecy. Imbued with his soul once more, it glowed in the starlight. He raised his head. Now there was another world to save.


	17. The Dark Cathedral

Kiya's legs were still shaking, but she strode towards the cathedral with the poise of a queen.

"I can get us inside the grounds, but beyond that I cannot say. It is not Palethorn's magic alone that permeates this place, there is something far older and darker hidden inside it." She closed her eyes and counted under her breath. "Seven souls were bound to the building like nails in a coffin. They have been cast loose but not set free. We must find them and bring them to the heart of the cathedral. Even that may not be enough, but if we fail this whole building will become a portal between realms, and London will become the demons' playground."

"Wait, 'we'?" Dan asked. "Kiya, you're shivering, you were stabbed. You can't fight shadow creatures like this."

"And what if we fail?" Raziel added. "Kift will need you. The world will need you. What gain is there in all three of us being at risk?"

She looked at them, one garbed in soul armour and the other armed with a blade forged to kill gods. All she had was a handful of spells and a sword she could barely use still tangled in the skirts of her bloodstained dress. Another stab of pain from barely healed woulds made her grit her teeth.

"If I leave you, you will have no way out until the souls are reunited. If you fail, you will die or worse. Do you understand?"

"Better me than the world. Daniel-"

"Given the alternative, I'd rather die trying."

Kiya nodded. She stepped up to the twisted gates. "Go as soon as the gates open. The spell will not last long."

She stretched her arms out in front of her, palms forward. Barbed coils of blue and green spilled from her lips as she chanted, wound around her arms like snakes, and pooled in her hands. They drifted across the small space like living smoke and merged with the gates. The glowing turquoise iron creaked in protest as they were forced open.

Raziel and Daniel ran through seconds before they snapped closed again.

"It's hot as hell," Dan said.

"And the rest."

Sulphur crunched under Raziel's feet as he scanned the black stone edifice. Seven souls to hold back something unspeakable and give the world a fighting chance. He pulled at the iron bound double doors, but they were stuck fast.

Dan groaned and pointed to a ledge below the windows on the second storey. Behind the brooding gargoyles, half hidden by a buttress, was a white spectral glow.

"We're going to have to climb."

"Joy."

The stones were old and the pointing irregular. For Raziel, it was an easy task to dig his claws into the mortar and scale the wall. Dan was having more difficulty.

"Try wedging your foot into that bracket."

"My hand's slipping."

"Hold onto the gargoyle's ankle. It will hardly mind."

Dan did as he was told. The gargoyle screeched as it sprang to life and took to the sky, trailing the screaming skeleton behind it.

Raziel scrambled onto the ledge.

"Can you jump?" he called.

Dan ducked a flailing claw, clinging on like grim death to the enraged creature's leg. "Yeah, all the way to the ground. Can't you do something?"

Raziel tried to think. Daniel's grip was slipping. Shooting the thing was out of the question, even if he did have a crossbow. Of course, there was the Reaver.

"Hold on tightly and be ready to jump when it gets close to the building."

The Ancient Vampires had armed their saviour well. The magic laid upon the Reaver quickened like an eager hound waiting for its master's command. He barely had to think to send it flying at the demon.

It fluttered against the the sudden updraft bidden by the blade, but was no more able to resist than a butterfly could fly against a hurricane. The demon blundered upwards, driven closer to the building by the Air Reaver's spell.

Dan's grip slipped. He flailed for a moment at the demon's claws then fell.

Raziel heard the scream cut off by a clatter of armour crashing onto roofing slates. There was a metallic slithering noise and then silence.

"Daniel?"

"I'm alright - ow - I think. Don't really want to look down."

Raziel climbed up to reach him, pausing only long enough to collect the almost formless wandering soul. Dan had wedged himself against a piece of ornamental stonework at an uncomfortable angle.

"You are in no danger of falling. Can you stand?"

"My foot's stuck."

"Oh for goodness' sake."

Once Dan was disentangled he looked across the spires and towers of the rooftop, looking for anything that meant he wouldn't have to climb back down the outside of the building. There weren't any obvious doors, but there was the light of another soul from between a pair of gargoyles. No words needed to be said as they drew their swords.

To the surprise of no one, the moment Raziel collected the soul the gargoyles shed their guise of stone. Two swords moved in unison against black claws, and soon the slates were slippery with their dark blood.

Dan gingerly stepped over it with care. The odd glimmer in the surface looked like something more than mere reflection.

"Um, Raziel, can you see any safe way down?"

The wraith pulled him away from the edge. A fall from this height would smash his bones in his armour.

There were a couple of shattered windows in the central tower. He was loath to imagine what was in there, but that was a problem for the future. It was less immediately dangerous for Daniel than a sloping roof.

With only the barest complaint, Dan lifted Raziel up to climb inside then scrambled in after him.

"We are in luck. This must be where they store the chandelier between services. There is usually enough cable to get them to the ground if needs be."

"What's going to be down there waiting for us?"

Raziel squinted through the gloom. "At least four heavily armoured knights, and... something. All I can discern is some shadows moving in the doorway of the next room."

"Great." Dan said flatly. "There's just one problem. The winding handle is up here."

"Not if you can hold off the guards for a few seconds. I can winch you down and glide down after you."

"Or we could use the access stairs."

"Or we could do that."

The stone steps were old and worn, but were infinitely preferable in almost every way to clinging on to a chandelier and being dropped into the yawning abyss. The door at the bottom opened out onto a hallway with a soul at one end and two knights trudging back and forth before it.

One looked up.

"'Ere, what are you doing here?"

"Bringing your end." Raziel drew the Reaver back ready to strike.

"Now, now, that's not very nice. I know you're not happy to see us here, but the Count was strong-armed into this."

"The Count?"

"Yeah, Palethorn and his goons came in, the two of 'em had a right old shouting match, and poor old Antony almost got frazzled. The Count didn't want that sort of magic getting thrown around, so we got sent here on guard duty."

"You should leave while you still can, or at least get to the gates. I do not want to tell Mihai that I was responsible for the death of his staff."

"Right you are, sir." The knight saluted lazily and turned to leave.

"Wait," Dan said. "Were you sent here to keep watch over the scattered souls?"

"That's right."

"Then can you tell us where the others are?"

"Yep, some of 'em anyway. Shadow demons have got a couple next door down and there's one by the organ. Dunno about the others but if any or 'em are in the undercroft I wouldn't go after them. Whatever's down there I don't want any part of it."

"Thank you. You've been very helpful."

They gathered the souls in the hall and near the organ and then, unwillingly, approached the door that led to the nest of shadow demons.

Raziel stopped with his hand on the doorknob. He glanced at Dan who nodded.

He opened the door slowly, the dim light of the hall showing a dozen dark figures hanging from the rafters. The occasional rustle of leathery wings did nothing to dispel the impression of a roost of giant bats. Across the flagstones two souls floated at the opposite ends of the room. In the darkness their wings, though hazy, could be plainly seen.

Dan tapped him gently on the shoulder and raised the Chalice of Souls. He pointed at himself and one of the trapped spirits, then at Raziel and the other.

Raziel nodded. He crossed the room as quickly as he dared, wincing at every clack of claws on stone, but not one of the sleeping demons so much as turned its head until the souls were gathered.

Then all hell broke loose. A cascade of death fell from the ceiling, the demons jostling one another as each vied to be the first to strike a blow.

Raziel raised the Reaver and sent a burst of light into the mass of teeth and claws which seemed to take up the entire world. The nearest demons shrank back just long enough to give him a head start.

"Run!"

He almost barrelled into Daniel, grabbed his arm, and fled the room, the shadow demons barely a pace behind. Claws scraped across armour and tore at Raziel's wings as the lead few snatched for them.

The wraith winced and stumbled, kept upright by Daniel's arm which was suddenly pulling him sideways. He didn't even have a chance to pull the door closed behind them before Dan, running too fast to stop, sent them tumbling down an unseen flight of stairs.

"Oww."

When multi-clawed death didn't immediately descend upon them, Raziel rolled off Dan's prone form and tried to make out their surroundings. The light flickering along the Reaver's blade barely cut a metre through the all encompassing blackness. Shadows clung to the vaulted ceiling and the nearest pillars stood out like white marble sentinels against whatever waited beyond.

He startled at Dan's hand reaching for his, but then clung tightly to it. It was not fear of darkness, but of what waited in it, in this undercroft where even shadow demons dared not follow. What had been trapped down here, the monster at the cathedral's heart that had needed seven souls to seal it away?

Every sound seemed to be amplified down here, the sound of their footsteps ringing out loud as a funeral bell, heralding their approach to whatever cared to listen. After long minutes of walking forward blindly and starting at shadows they reached a door. Light spilled out from the gap beneath it and the quiet crackling of flames could just be heard beyond.

It was a better option than the cold hall. They stepped inside.

Hell didn't say the half of it. The cathedral's stones just about held fast, but cracked and and buckled close to the centre of the room where gouts of flame lashed up from a pit. Hovering above it on bony wings was a creature immeasurably older than this building or this world. Time wrapped around it like a leaden cloak, and had turned its face to little more than a skin wrapped skull.

Skeletal fingers reached out to the last soul which floated wings outstretched before it, the final lynchpin between the chaos entity and freedom. It turned its eyes to Raziel, pleading wordlessly. He lowered his cowl.

Bright as sunrise, the freed souls flitted out and surged towards the beast. Blue and red sparks intermingled, became a blinding white, and the creature tumbled back into the pit. The flames guttered and died, but carried up on the failing updraught was a charred and yellowed page.

Dan snatched it from the air. Most of the page was taken up by a stylised drawing of a demon with a goat's skull for a head. Zarok's spidery writing spiralled around it. He squinted at the faded ink before he was shaken back to the present by Raziel.

"Daniel! For God's sake move!"

He looked up, then down to the floor which was crumbling into the pit. Cracks ran across the floor and climbed the walls, widening by the second.

Giving up on his friend's reaction time, Raziel hauled him bodily out of the room, tugging him forwards at a smart pace. Bars of red light from the failing floor helped light the way back through the undercroft. That finally kicked Dan's brain back into gear and he started running, pulling Raziel by the hand up the stairs.

In the half light of the cathedral's halls neither of them saw the shadow demons until they were almost upon them. Like a flock of oversized bats, they didn't spare the pair a glance but funneled up the trembling central tower in search of open skies.

Stone shrieked and buckled as the foundations fell away piece by piece. They hared along the shaking corridors to the big, bolted doors.

Raziel hauled at them but they held fast.

"Up the tower!" Dan panted. "At least we know there's... some way out."

Dodging falling masonry, they found the door and scrambled up the stairs. The pitted stone steps were made treacherous by the shaking and swaying of the tower. More than once they had to jump over missing stairs barely visible in the gloom. If they had been half a minute quicker, they might have made it onto the roof before the cathedral shook itself apart.

From a distance it looked almost graceful. The walls folded up like a house of cards, the spires twisted and fell, and in minutes there was barely anything of the building still standing.


End file.
